Author: Meredith Carroll

In Collaboration with the CTA, Entrepreneurial Imagination Meets Historic Infrastructure Investment

Meredith Carroll Features, Student Stories , , , ,

MBA students harnessed entrepreneurship to envision revitalization

A group of student presents a poster with prominent depaul blues and reds, plus the CTA logo

A hub where pet owners can gather to meet neighbors. Urban agriculture using recycled water. Incubators for entrepreneurs and makers.

These were just a few of the projects that MBA students, led by Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship James Bort, proposed for a South Side community this winter quarter as part of DePaul’s partnership with the Chicago Transit Authority.

Writ large, the partnership harnesses entrepreneurship to drive economic growth on the South Side in conjunction with the agency’s historic Red Line Extension.

Students’ project proposals are the first step towards that larger goal. They demonstrate how entrepreneurs can capitalize on this massive investment in infrastructure, setting off a cycle of revitalization. To a much-needed infrastructure project, these projects bring entrepreneurial imagination.

“Entrepreneurship is fundamentally an imagined reality,” said Bort. “It’s about storytelling. It’s about your ability to be optimistic and empathetic.”

 

In collaboration with the CTA, focusing on a community with promise

The class focused their efforts on a once-booming stretch of South Michigan Avenue in Roseland.

CTA Director of Diversity Programs JuanPablo Prieto explained the factors that led to that decision.

“For every dollar we invest in transit, we get $4 in economic return,” he said. “We want the communities where we’re making these investments to benefit from that return.”

The CTA commissioned a transit-supported development study on the area, engaging extensively with community members. Students delved into that research.

With Prieto’s help, they also heard directly from community stakeholders. The head of the Chamber of Commerce came to speak. So did the local alderman’s chief of staff.

Stakeholder interviews ensured that students’ projects were grounded in the needs of the community.

“We moved from studying the history of Roseland to understanding who’s there today and what they need,” Bort said. “Only then did we move into ideation.”

 

Informed by stakeholders, projects focus on empowering local entrepreneurs

A group of students smiling and networking
Stefanie Slager, center, at the class’ poster presentation

On March 7, students shared their visions at a packed poster presentation. Faculty, staff, and students attended. So did CTA officials and community stakeholders.

“We were blown away by the thought, the intentionality, and the care that went into the listening sessions with the stakeholders,” said Prieto. “Each project had some element of what the stakeholders brought to the table.”

MBA student Stefanie Slager’s team shared a plan for a “living lab” for new entrepreneurs. There, they hoped, local founders and makers could launch businesses that would attract visitors to the neighborhood – especially in culinary arts, entertainment, fashion, and business innovation.

A box of fresh donuts sat on a table next to Slager. She’d picked them up that morning from Old Fashioned Donuts, an iconic 50-year-old, family-owned shop in Roseland: an example of the community’s existing strength and potential.

“When I went in on the day of the presentation, you could tell that everyone kind of knows each other,” Slager said. “How blessed are we to work with this community and hopefully make a difference? It is our goal for Roseland to again become the jewel of the South Side.”

A few groups over, MBA student Keiph Oliver and his team presented their plan. Like Slager’s group, they envisioned an entrepreneurial ecosystem – one that would equip residents with tools and resources to realize their own visions for the community.

“We want to create programs that bring businesses into high schools,” creating mentorships and job opportunities, explained Oliver. Exposing youth to a wide range of career paths was a priority.

“Exposure affects what someone believes they could be,” he said. “They don’t know what skills they already have. They don’t know how those skills could transfer.”

 

Looking ahead to the next phase of the DePaul-CTA partnership

Two professionals in blue suits deep in conversation at a packed networking event
Dean of the Driehaus College of Business Sulin Ba converses with CTA representatives at the March 7 poster presentation

In future phases of the DePaul-CTA collaboration, some students will partner directly with local businesses. Others will pick up where Bort’s winter quarter class left off, bringing select projects one step closer to reality.

For Bort, the projects attest to the vital role entrepreneurship plays in community renewal.

“Entrepreneurship is one of the most important elements for a community to succeed,” Bort said. “You need entrepreneurs working outside of the box, or working with resource constraints, figuring out how to make it happen.”

And, he added, you need initial investments in infrastructure to give those entrepreneurs a place to start.

“Without infrastructure, you really don’t have anything,” Bort added. “People have been fighting for this Red Line Extension for 50 years. What an exciting time to have been here for it.”

Prieto echoed Bort’s sentiments.

“I want to reiterate CTA’s commitment to this project,” he said. “This was a promise that was made more than 50 years ago to this community. We are committed to delivering on that promise. And we are excited to go down this path with the community as we not only build the extension but support the development that will come with it.”

 

For students, a lesson in the power of place and purpose

Another lesson of the project? The power of place, in all its specificity: whether that place is Chicago, Roseland, or DePaul.

Oliver is a graduate of DePaul’s film program who plans, empowered by his DePaul MBA, to one day launch his own production company.

“A lot of what I think about as a filmmaker is Hollywood,” he said. “The entertainment industry found a city and set up shop. It created this entire infrastructure that, for a long time, had no competition.

“How do we create an infrastructure like that for Chicago? What does that look like? In my lifetime, can I not only create a company, but can I contribute to generating a higher standard and a better business infrastructure? One that will bring more jobs and allow people to stay here?”

From Bort’s perspective, the collaboration is uniquely suited to DePaul.

“We have this Vincentian mission. When we see an opportunity to help, we jump in. That’s our default,” Bort said. “How does a DePaul grad stand out? Things like this, maybe. There are pro-social elements; there are human-centered design elements, empathy elements. It’s really tangible. It’s hands-in-the-dirt. And you’re working together to figure it out.”

Business Analytics Capstone Class Sparks Industry Collaboration, Student Success

Meredith Carroll Features, Student Stories , , ,

Capstone class “challenges the status quo” of learning

A large group of students poses in front of a screen in a modern room

 

When the co-directors of DePaul’s M.S. in Business Analytics program, Khadija Ali Vakeel and Sina Ansari, embarked on rethinking the program’s capstone last year, they knew they wanted it to center on a collaboration with real-world companies.

This approach promised to set students up for success in industry. But it also posed challenges. Real-world datasets are often messy. Clear answers aren’t guaranteed. Distilling insights from data is as much art as it is science, demanding storytelling skills as well as analytical savvy.

In a word, the setup for the M.S. in Business Analytics capstone “challenges the status quo” of how most classes are taught, according to Vakeel.

“Students lead their own projects,” she said. “Students pose their own questions and find their own answers, supported by the instructor and industry partners. They are discovering things. It pushes them to think about their own creativity and storytelling as well as analysis — all in a very compact time of 10 weeks.”

Students offer companies a fresh perspective

Vakeel and Ansari launched the new, hands-on version of the capstone project in spring 2024. That year, with the help of a third-party mediator, Altheon AI, the program collaborated with Skyline Design and Valqari.

In fall 2024, the program began collaborating with Reyes Holdings, a food and beverage distributor that is the sixth largest privately held company by revenue in the U.S. according to a list compiled by Forbes. That collaboration has continued ever since.

Reyes has a vast logistics network with a trove of data to match. Powered by AI, cameras in truck cabs collect virtually every kind of data imaginable. Are drivers eating or texting while they drive? Are they leaving an adequate stopping distance?

Most of all, Reyes wanted to know, how effective were its coaching programs? What could it do to make its operations safer — and bring down costs in the process?

The company had in-house experts to answer those questions. But it also needed a fresh perspective.

That’s where DePaul students came in.

“The students have so much energy,” said Vakeel. “They think outside the box. When employees of the company are looking at the same data day in and day out, they might not be able to see what a fresh perspective from students can bring in.”

The power of data — from unearthing hidden stories to driving strategy

A small group of students poses in front of a screen in a modern room
The winning team poses with faculty and corporate partners from Reyes Holdings.

The brief for the project was intentionally open-ended. Student groups could choose which variables to look at, how to analyze them, and how to put them in context.

In capstone instructor Nidhal Bouazizi’s words, the project offered an invitation to “get a little messy with the data.”

“We were just given this dataset and the objective to enhance driver safety. There were no other real guidelines,” said Nithya Abraham, one of the students in Bouazizi’s latest winter quarter class. “That wasn’t because of our professor; that was the nature of the project. You have to play with the dataset and figure things out on your own.”

For Abraham’s class, that dataset was an intimidating file spanning over 100 columns and nearly 300,000 rows. Ongoing guidance from Bouazizi helped the student teams refine their approach. So did representatives from Reyes Holdings, who worked closely with the class throughout the term.

Some teams analyzed how factors like time and location affected risky behaviors. Others, including Abraham’s, looked at the firm’s coaching programs, comparing their effectiveness across different subsidiaries around the country.

Often, the hardest part wasn’t sifting through data fields or crafting complicated predictive models. It was figuring out how to chart a course through the data that could lead to an actionable recommendation.

In that choice lay a key lesson of the capstone project: Data is only as useful as the recommendations distilled from it.

“We could have gone and talked about a thousand things, but we stuck to focusing on preventing near-collision events to align with the cost-saving objective,” said student Alyssa Kozal. “We wanted to make a strong recommendation. And I think that made our presentation strong too.”

Or, as Bouazizi put it: “recommendations are how you monetize the data.” Recommendations — and the narratives that connect recommendations directly to the data.

Ultimately, the story of the M.S. in Business Analytics capstone project isn’t merely about students’ considerable technical expertise, or even their creativity and drive in applying it to real-world scenarios. It’s about the power of connecting statistics to strategy — and about what happens when students get the chance to think like a leader.

Kozal and her teammates, Malika Diwakar and Srushti Summanwar, were among a select few teams who got the chance to present their findings directly to executives from Reyes Holdings.

“It was important to us to have a storyline,” said Diwakar. “Who are we? What was our objective in this process? We really focused” — inspired by guidance from Bouazizi, she added — “on explaining our entire thought process, beginning to end.”

That’s part of what the capstone class gives students, said Vakeel: the ability to tell stories not just about the data, but about the process of sifting through it. The ability, in that way, to connect a company’s operations on the ground now to its strategy moving forward.

“I’m not someone who can sit at a screen for eight hours coding,” said Abraham. “What I do enjoy is looking at datasets, drawing insights from them, and making recommendations based on those insights. The capstone solidified that this is what I like doing. This is where I want to build my career.”

For students and companies alike, the capstone opens up new possibilities

Business analytics is a growing field. Bouazizi and Vakeel cite a number of students who leveraged their capstone experience to secure internships. One of Bouazizi’s students even landed a full-time role working for a manufacturer of AI-equipped cameras like the ones Reyes uses.

“This hands-on experience puts our students at a huge competitive advantage,” said Bouazizi. “We’re not providing you with a case study somebody wrote. This is the real deal.”

This spring, the program will partner with LabelMaster in addition to Reyes. That will give students the opportunity to pick a project that aligns with their career goals. It will also, Vakeel stressed, be just as beneficial for industry partners as it is for students.

“I’d say that this is a call to action to Chicago-based companies who want to partner with us,” said Vakeel. “We are open to such strategic partnerships, and we would welcome them in the future.”

“The responsibility involved in these projects is very high,” she added. “But the students have made us proud. It is a win-win situation—for DePaul, for our students, and for the companies.”

Deloitte Partner Jenny Ciszewski’s (BUS ’02) Tips for Purposeful Leadership

Meredith Carroll Alumni Profiles , , , ,

The Driehaus alumna and first female president of Ledger & Quill was recently recognized as one of the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business  

A group of four women in business professional pose, smiling with arms around one another's shouldersFor Jenny Ciszewski (BUS ’02), being a leader means understanding how work fits into the full scope of people’s lives — including her own. 

“I try to make sure people know that I want them to be the best version of themselves when they come to work,” she said. “And that means they need to have time for whatever they prioritize in life [outside of work].”  

Ciszewski is a partner at Deloitte, where in addition to serving her clients, she also leads the audit & assurance marketplace strategy which focuses on growing the business nationally. Last year, she was named among the Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business by the San Francisco Business Times.  

“Having done a minor in women’s studies at DePaul, it’s something that’s always been near and dear to my heart to have more women leaders in business,” she said. “Getting nominated and being honored in such a way was a full-circle moment.” 

Putting priorities into practice – and integrating work and life 

As a partner at one of the “Big Four” accounting firms, Ciszewski is a trailblazer. While the industry has made strides in recent decades, women are still underrepresented in leadership roles. That’s changing, Ciszewski is quick to note. But it’s a change that takes time.  

It’s also a change that involves reimagining how work and life fit together.  

“In our profession, and especially in audit, you have to manage work-life integration,” she said. “When I became a mom for the first time as a senior manager, I took it upon myself to mentor other first-time moms. I want to make sure that people understand that they can be super successful in this profession and super successful in their life as a parent.” 

Parenthood is far from the only responsibility that people need to balance with work. Work-life integration, Ciszewski noted, isn’t even about responsibility, per se — it might just as easily be about a favorite sport, or a concert, or a marathon training schedule. 

But there is something about parenthood in general — and motherhood, with its attendant cultural pressures, in particular — that throws the question of work-life integration into stark relief. The formative moments of childhood cannot always be planned in advance, nor rescheduled to make way for other priorities. 

After she made partner, Ciszewski had the chance to work with an executive coach as part of Deloitte’s ongoing professional development.  

“Those sessions really helped to clarify for me that, as a leader, my top priority is my family,” she said. “It’s being there for my three daughters.” 

Prioritizing family can still be accomplished while meeting and exceeding your goals at work, she stressed. It’s an ever-changing balance: one that requires letting go of the pressure that many mothers, in particular, feel to prioritize parenting at all times.  

“I don’t get so caught up in if I miss something of theirs because I’m traveling for work,” Ciszewski said. “I don’t feel a lot of guilt because my career is enabling them to do what matters to them. If I’m there most of the time — if they feel supported by me and my husband — that’s what matters.”   

A DePaul upbringing – and a legacy of support for women 

A woman poses with her pre-teen daughter, holding a glass awardCiszewski’s dad was that supportive and influential figure in her life. His mother marched for women’s suffrage and worked as an English professor at a time when few women worked outside the home.  

“My dad came from a very pro-female background,” Ciszewski said. “He taught my sisters and I to change the oil in our cars and encouraged us to play sports of all kinds. He always wanted us to know that we could do whatever we wanted in life— even if it seemed like a male-dominated area.’” 

With his support, Ciszewski and her three siblings pursued higher education. For Ciszewski and her sister Stacy Janiak, now a member of DePaul’s Board of Trustees, that meant attending DePaul.  

“I received a full scholarship to DePaul through Ledger and Quill,” DePaul’s alumni donor society for the School of Accounting and MIS, Ciszewski said. “I wouldn’t be where I’m at today without that. My dad was a letter carrier and my mom was a stay-at-home mom caring for the four kids; I made more my first year as an auditor than he did after forty years working at the post office.”  

Her time at DePaul reinforced the importance of giving back. As a student, she participated in service trips over spring break. She also tutored children every week at Visitation Academy in Englewood. After graduation, she served on the Ledger & Quill Board, including serving as its female president from 2009 to 2011.  

As for today, Ciszewski and her husband recently established a scholarship that will support female students in accounting. The scholarship honors her father, who passed away from pancreatic cancer in 2016. 

“To honor him in that way was so special,” she said. “I really feel that I wouldn’t be where I am today without the education that I received at DePaul— and without people who I don’t even know, who gave those funds for my scholarships. They had a huge impact on my life and my ability to get a degree and do well in the world. And hopefully, we can do the same for others.” 

A full-circle moment  

Establishing the Peter Babiak Memorial Scholarship was a full-circle moment for Ciszewski. So, too, was being honored as one of the Bay Area’s Most Influential Women in Business.  

When she crossed the stage at the awards ceremony, she had the chance to answer one of several prompts. She chose the one that asked her to share what she is most proud of.   

“When I got up there, I said that I’m most proud of being an incredible mom,” she said. “It’s ultimately what matters at the end of the day: that I’m doing right by how I raise them.”  

For Ciszewski, it’s one and the same as doing right by the people she leads at work — and all the leaders, women especially, who are coming up behind her. 

Institute for Housing Studies Unearths Hidden Stories of Affordable Housing in Chicago

Meredith Carroll Scholarly Pursuits , , , ,

Consider the intersection between housing market forces and finding a place to live: decades-long cycles play out alongside human-scale stories, each with their own role to play in shaping a city.

That intersection is where the Institute for Housing Studies (IHS) does its work.

Housed in DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business, IHS digs into the data to unearth the hidden trends shaping Chicago’s housing market. The institute partners with community groups and policymakers, providing data-driven tools that help make affordable housing accessible to the populations that need it most.

All of this gives IHS a unique vantage point into the stories hidden within Chicago’s housing landscape. Read on for some takeaways about the past, present, and future of affordable housing in Chicago from IHS Executive Director Geoff Smith.

The mystery of the disappearing two– and four-flats

Iconic, brick Chicago two-flats on a tree-lined streetWhen many people hear affordable housing, said Smith, they picture federally and locally subsidized programs.

For most low-income renters and homeowners, that’s not the case.

Instead, most affordable housing is so-called “naturally occurring.” That is, it’s affordable because it’s older, or located in a neighborhood with fewer resources and amenities.

Naturally occurring affordable housing is a broad category, defined as much by what it’s not (subsidized or regulated) as what it is.

Within that category, it turns out, the specifics matter.

A community group in Albany Park reached out to IHS with a phenomenon they’d noticed: two– and four-flat buildings in the neighborhood were disappearing.

Subsequent work revealed that such buildings were disappearing citywide — and that their decline correlated directly with the loss of affordable housing writ large.

The loss of two– and four-flats looked different in different parts of the city. In neighborhoods where land values were going up, new buyers were opting to tear them down in favor of single-family housing.

In neighborhoods with a history of systemic disinvestment, meanwhile, population loss meant that many two– and four-flats were falling into disrepair. And, when these buildings were demolished, they weren’t being rebuilt.

Particularly in these parts of the city, the loss of two– and four-flats didn’t just signify a reduction in the amount of affordable housing on offer. It signified the loss of a specific type of affordable housing, one with specific advantages.

“[These buildings offer] an opportunity to defray the costs by renting out the other units,” Smith said. “They offer the opportunity for multigenerational housing.”

“As you lose that kind of housing, you erode the housing options,” Smith continued. “You lose the opportunity to create new homeowners.”

Reimagining housing ownership, one data point at a time

If the landscape of affordable housing is varied and particular, then affordable housing interventions are too.

“There’s not one silver bullet strategy,” explained Smith. Scaling back restrictions on new development can help, he said, but that’s only true in neighborhoods where land and property values have been high enough, and for long enough, to justify the risk of investing in new construction.

One approach could involve working with landlords who want to sell their properties – particularly long-time landlords who own aging housing stock, which makes up a significant proportion of housing in Chicago.

“What kind of programs or incentives might you need to convince owners to keep the property without selling?” said Smith. “Are there ownership models that might exist where the owner could sell their property to a mission-oriented entity that would keep it relatively affordable?”

One such option, Smith said, is a community land trust. Such trusts hold the land that housing is located on, bringing ownership of housing itself within closer reach. Across the city, the IHS partners with groups that are experimenting with this model. Just last year, Smith served on a statewide task force that studied community land trusts, laying the foundation for implementation on a wider scale.

In an uncertain future, a vital role for applied research

On a local level, community land trusts are one example of a promising tool to preserve and expand access to affordable housing.

Implementing such programs, however, is slow going. And, on a national level, the future of affordable housing writ large is profoundly uncertain.

Federal programs have historically played a major role in expanding access to housing. What might happen if they’re scaled back?

“The one thing I can say is that, in times of volatility and uncertainty, having in-depth information on the market is more important than ever,” said Smith. “It increases the need to be targeted and strategic in how you deploy limited resources.”

“That’s a big role we play with our data,” he added. “So I’m hopeful that our work will continue to be relevant and useful, whichever direction the next few years take us.”

Marketing Professor’s Research Leads to Surprising Conclusion about Political Conversations

Meredith Carroll Faculty Focus, Scholarly Pursuits

Middle-of-the-road stances risked alienating allies and opponents alike, research found

How do you navigate political discussions?  

You might expect, as many people do, that expressing “two-sided” or ambivalent positions about controversial political issues could help you bridge divides. In particular, you might expect that expressing ambivalence would make you more likeable to allies and opponents alike.  

A new study coauthored by DePaul Assistant Professor of Marketing Geoff Durso found exactly the opposite. Expressing ambivalence was not only unhelpful when it came to winning over opponents on contentious issues. It also hurt study subjects’ standing among those on the same side of the issue at hand.  

As a marketing professor with a background in psychology, Durso often works at the intersection of consumer behavior and political sentiment.   

Read on for a discussion of why the study’s results surprised him, what might explain the findings, and how insights from marketing and politics can inform each other. 

Or: Watch a video version of the interview on our YouTube channel, part of an ongoing series highlighting Driehaus faculty and what their research can teach us about the world around us.  

On politics as identity 

Driehaus College of Business (DCOB): What were your expectations going into this study? Did it surprise you to find that expressing ambivalence didn’t help — or in some cases even hurt — people’s likeability?  

Geoff Durso (GD): People generally like others who share their position. Then, if you think of people who disagree with you, it seemed reasonable to predict that expressing conflict in your own position might communicate some degree of respect or credence to your opponents’ position at the same time. So when it comes to both groups, you might expect that expressing two-sided opinions would be beneficial to people’s popularity, a sort of middle ground that everyone respected. But we find precisely the opposite pattern.   

My so-called position allies — those who agree with me on an issue — don’t like that I’m conflicted at all. They don’t like that I’m rocking the boat. And to my opponents, expressing conflict doesn’t matter, because I’m against them on the overall position. It doesn’t even register that I feel conflicted, or that my position acknowledges both sides.   

DCOB: How did you go about making sense of those results? Why do you think that was the case?    

GD: The way people think of each other is increasingly polarized. And what’s really interesting about that is that, sometimes, an issue position can become a group identity.   

Say, during the pandemic, I’m pro-mask mandate. But, I express conflict about it. I’m weakening the pro-mask mandate connection among my allies. And when it comes to an anti-mask mandate person, they consider me part of an outgroup “opponent” due to our larger disagreement on mask mandate policies.   

In other words, the nuances in my position don’t even register to opponents. And the same nuance makes my allies feel less connected to me.   

On the connections between marketing and politics 

DCOB: Some folks might be surprised to hear that a marketing professor researches political discourse. What do these two fields have in common?   

GD: I tell my students to think of politics as the marketing of a vote. You might have a dollar and you can give that dollar to any company (or candidate!) based on what products or positions they sell. Likewise, you can also give your vote to a candidate that represents what you want versus the other candidate. Both actions represent consumer behavior. It’s just the currency that varies.   

In other words, a marketplace is not just money, and it’s not just buying things. You can think more generally in terms of choices and decisions between many options in the marketplace. That’s what every marketing campaign has in common, whether it’s toothpaste brands or presidential candidates. The stakes vary, but the underlying marketing processes are similar.     

On where to go from here 

DCOB: Any takeaways from your study results that you think marketers should be paying attention to?   

GD: There’s more and more demand from consumers for brands to make sociopolitical kinds of statements. Our findings suggest that being two-sided about these is going to repel a lot of people. Trying to please everyone with a two-sided sociopolitical statement may simply lead to pleasing no one.   

DCOB: What questions has this research left you with? What do you want to understand better about this issue?   

GD: A truism of psychology is that we judge other people by their actions, but we judge ourselves by our intentions. Expressing ambivalence in our own sociopolitical position may feel personally right (we intend to bridge political divides) but we fail to appreciate how this would be perceived in reality – we may seem inconsistent or waffling, for instance.   

How do you get people to change their expectations around expressing ambivalence? How do you get them to shift away from being focused on their own intentions? Are there ways to generate win-win consensus on divisive sociopolitical issues, and how best to do so? That’s what I’d like to learn a bit more about in my future work. 

Three-Quarters of American Workers are Vulnerable to This Widespread Form of Mistreatment. Why Isn’t it Talked about More?

Meredith Carroll Faculty Focus, Scholarly Pursuits

Driehaus researchers shed light on weight-based mistreatment in the workplace

Research can be pathbreaking in any number of ways. It can distill received wisdom — or upend it. It can organize existing knowledge or chart a new course forward.

Or, like a paper recently published by four Driehaus researchers, research can put a name to something at once widely experienced and seldom discussed. Mistreatment in the workplace based on weight is an unfortunately familiar fact for those who experience it. But it’s rarely talked about: not among leadership; not in the media; and not even, thanks to shame and stigma, among those who are harmed by it.

“We wanted to study something that is real,” said Jaclyn Jensen, a professor and the associate dean for student success at Driehaus, and one of the study’s authors. “We wanted to shed light on something important that we think people are overlooking.”

On why weight-based mistreatment has gone unchecked

Jensen and her coauthors — fellow management and entrepreneurship faculty Grace Lemmon and Goran Kuljanin, along with Doctorate in Business Administration student Renee Chu-Jacoby —  published the results of their work in October.

Across two studies, the team found that weight-based mistreatment is as widespread as it is damaging.

In the U.S., for starters, 75% of the workforce counts as “overweight” or “obese.” (That’s according to the Body Mass Index: a widely used measure that is also widely criticized.)

As part of their study, the Driehaus team surveyed 1,008 adults who fell into this category. Among that sample, 758 people — or 75% — had been mistreated at work because of their weight within the past six months.

Together, these numbers sketch the outlines of a pervasive phenomenon, reinforced by widespread cultural stigmas. These stigmas, the researchers speculate, are part of why the problem has gone unchecked for so long.

“In our culture, we believe that if you’re larger, you’re responsible for being larger,” said Lemmon. “Larger bodies are associated with less competency, less warmth, more selfishness.”

“This is a topic that crosses the personal and professional divide,” added Jensen. “We maybe don’t have scripts that tell us whether we should be talking about it at all. Or, if we are, why we’re talking about it. Those guardrails just aren’t there.”

On why weight-based mistreatment can be hard to spot

For those who experience it, weight-based mistreatment is many-faced, many-formed. Jensen, Lemmon, Kuljanin, and Chu-Jacoby worked with a smaller study population to account for the full spectrum of how weight stigma shows up in the workplace.

They surfaced plenty of examples of overt, aggressive mistreatment: name-calling, exclusion, physical harassment. They also found examples of larger-bodied workers being perceived as less competent and less professional: of these workers being denied access to information or roles because of their size.

Just as damaging — and perhaps more surprising to those who haven’t faced it— were seemingly benign comments known as “benevolent mistreatment.”

Benevolent mistreatment might masquerade as concern for a larger-bodied coworker’s well-being. It might manifest as the suggestion to opt for a salad over a sandwich, or the snide remark about too many trips to the candy bowl — all directed at larger-bodied colleagues without being levied at smaller-bodied individuals who make similar choices.

Benevolent mistreatment, the researchers found, was just as damaging as other forms. No matter how overt or covert the behavior targeted at them, study subjects were likely to withdraw from work; to experience rumination and shame; or to neglect selfcare.

“[Benevolent mistreatment is] very much somebody entering your personal space: your personal emotional space; your personal cognitive space,” said Lemmon. “It might not be physical in nature. But it is still somebody trying to get their way into your life and control you. There’s an element of control implicit in benevolent mistreatment that’s not present in the other forms of mistreatment. And I think that’s why people react so strongly.”

On the potential costs to organizations

Weight-based mistreatment at work, the study found, is undeniably detrimental to workers’ mental health.

Equally, allowing weight-based bullying to proceed unchecked can cost organizations.

“It turns out that how people are treated inside organizations affects their behavior,” said Kuljanin. “That’s why I like this line of work. When you mistreat people, you’re clearly not getting the best out of them.”

The team hasn’t yet had the chance to quantify the impact of weight-based mistreatment on organizations. But, given the scale of the problem and existing research in workplace climates, they conjecture that these costs include lost productivity, deteriorating collaboration, and difficulty attracting and retaining talent.

“We’re social creatures,” Kuljanin said. “We talk about each other and gossip all the time. Organizations develop reputations. And so if you’re an organization that has a reputation for this kind of mistreatment, then you’re going to be missing out on a whole bunch of talent.”

On where to go from here

An issue so widespread, the researchers stressed, will necessitate solutions at any number of levels: from organizational culture right through to public policy.

As for what organizations can do? According to the team, existing research suggests that culture changes happen on many fronts. It happens when organizations change their policies. It happens when leaders draw a clear line. And it happens when all workers — but particularly those in positions of power — give one another models of how to act with compassion and empathy.

When workplace culture does shift, though, that change tends to be pervasive. It’s less about a shift in any one kind of behavior, said Jensen, than it is about a shift in the values underlying people’s choices.

“Take trying to diminish sexual harassment,” she said. “The message isn’t just, ‘respect your female colleagues.’ The message is, ‘all your colleagues deserve to be valued.’ So there are ripple effects. Those types of environments see less sexual harassment. But they also see less of other kinds of harassment, too.”

Compassion and empathy, the authors agree, are two such values that might drive change around weight stigma in the workplace.

—

All told, Lemmon, Jensen, and Kuljanin hope that drawing attention to the scope of the problem will be a catalyst for change.

“When you study nastiness in the workplace, you quickly learn that people know it’s going on,” said Jensen. “It’s just that they don’t necessarily want to talk about it. So one of the things that would be good to normalize, for organizations, is this idea: Not talking about it doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.”

“If the thrust of our outreach is awareness,” said Lemmon, “we’re happy.

For Driehaus Students, a Deep Dive into Forex Becomes a Testament to Teamwork — and a Launching Pad for Careers

Meredith Carroll Features, Student Stories

The foreign currency exchange market is endlessly complex and constantly shifting. For the institutions that trade on it, being able to do so seamlessly — and in a way that maximizes profits — is paramount.  

Four young men in suits -- three of them visibly related -- pose, smiling, in front of a modern, glass-walled classroom.DePaul students dived headfirst into the complexities of the foreign exchange market (also known as Forex) at the inaugural Northern Trust case competition on October 17 and 18.  

Co-organized by Driehaus’ BETA Hub and the School of Computing and sponsored by Northern Trust, the competition charged teams of students (who could compete on a business or technology track) with improving a hypothetical bank’s process for Forex, including cryptocurrency. With guidance from Northern Trust professionals, students had just over 24 hours to devise a workable solution — and sell it to a panel of experienced judges. 

Preparation, delegation, details — and trust

For the four Driehaus students who won the business track, the victory was a testament to the importance of preparation, delegation, details, and trust.  

“I think DePaul did a great job preparing us,” said team member Diego Villaseñor. “What really helped us was knowing how to do due diligence, how to do your homework, and how to ask the right people the right questions.”   

Diego, his brothers Fabian and Maximos, and their teammate Nick Lopez came in with a wide array of strengths. All seniors, their majors span accounting, marketing, management, and finance. 

“The last thing you want is to be stressed about your other team members,” said Lopez. “I don’t think there was a single moment where that happened. We were able to divide and conquer. I took over the cryptocurrency side, and I knew my part forward and backward. We knew that we could trust each other with what we were assigned.”  

Four young men in suits gather close around a whiteboardThe team had been working on building trust since long before the competition — or even their time at DePaul. The three Villaseñor brothers are triplets; Lopez is a longtime friend who grew up down the street in Orland Park, a southwest suburb of Chicago.  

The group found a room where they could focus. They brought in a whiteboard to jot down ideas. Diego, the group’s finance expert, brought in a second monitor. Feedback from the judges helped them quickly to home in on the main questions: 

“There are a lot of buzzwords when you talk about crypto in particular,” said Maximos. “You can come up with a lot of ideas. But how are you going to do them?  What are the legal parameters? Those are the common questions teams kept getting asked by judges.”  

On selling your idea

Once the team had the framework of a solution in place, they faced a second hurdle: How to sell their solution to a panel of judges in just under 10 minutes? And how to ensure their solution would be memorable?  

Fabian’s experience in sales helped them arrive at a solution. They would anchor their presentation around Carmen: a fictitious pension fund manager who needed her bank to be able to make trades on foreign assets.  

“It’s so important to make the information tangible,” said Fabian. “You can have great information. But if customers don’t understand it, what use is it?”  

“With the Carmen story, we were able to talk about a particular client and specific issues she might have,” echoed Maximos. “It really made our presentation come full circle.” 

Equally important was being ready to embrace the unexpected:  

“During the Q&A portion,” said Diego, “it was so important to defend your answers, to make sure the judges were able to understand. We had to get comfortable with being asked questions on the spot.”  

Connections, careers, and where to go from here

Four young men in suits pose, smiling. They are wearing nametags and lanyards.Reflecting on the experience as a capstone of sorts for their time at DePaul, the team returned to the value of making connections — to one another, to professionals, and to their careers.  

“I think a lot of times, students are nervous about doing a case competition – or to network with people there,” said Lopez. “One of the mentors we spoke with was the Senior Vice President of FX Technology and Product Development for Northern Trust. He’s a very successful individual – but at the end of the day, we’re all people. I think a lot of the success we had was connecting with people on a personal level.” 

All four teammates see direct connections between their experiences at Driehaus, in the case competition, and where they’re going next.  

Maximos will be starting a full-time role in HR at Plante Moran, where he’s been working part-time while he finishes up his studies.  

“A lot of what I work on relates back to this case study,” he said. “There’s a lot of communication. You need to be able to have trust, and to be able give and receive constructive feedback.”  

Fabian will continue pursuing his passion for tech sales in a role at Salesforce. This work, he hopes, will allow him to continue helping fellow Blue Demons advance their careers.  

Diego is choosing among competing offers in consulting. It’s an industry, he said, that speaks to his passion for project management and learning about new, complicated topics quickly — both skills he got to hone at the case competition.  

Lopez, who is graduating in June, is preparing to sit for his CPA exam. After graduation, he has an offer lined up with Apercen Partners, a boutique tax consulting firm for high net-worth individuals: the kind of setting where he may well be able to implement what he’s learned from his deep dive into Forex and cryptocurrency.  

When the team looks back on their time at DePaul, they think of opportunities like this case competition. Over time, the team said, such opportunities can accumulate into invaluable experience. 

“All four of us are first-generation college students. That, and coming from a Latino background, really lit a fire under us to make the most out of our time here,” said Maximos. “I think case competitions like this really help you build those connections and get experience. Win or lose, you’re still going to get something – and it’s those connections with those people.” 

You Create Your Own Power: Triple Demon Dana Alkhouri Reflects on the Entrepreneurial Mindset

Meredith Carroll Alumni Profiles

A headshot of a young woman with long hair, smilingDana Alkhouri is many things: A Triple Demon who earned her bachelor’s, her master’s in public policy, and her MBA from DePaul. A journalist who covered the height of the pandemic on the ground in New York working for ABC News. And, as of a few years ago the founder of The Sidelines, a newsletter that focuses on women in athletics and wellness.

Recently, Dana shared her insights into making a career pivot, making space for women’s stories, and making it in the face of skepticism.

Driehaus College of Business (DCOB): Tell us about your current project, The Sidelines: a newsletter focused on sharing stories from women’s sports and wellness. How did it get started? What’s the most impactful advice you received along the way?

Dana Alkhouri (DA): The Sidelines is a sports newsletter by women and for all.

My friend Megan Schaltegger and I launched it in 2020. We started it because, back then, there was not a huge amount of interest in coverage of women in sports. It was such a niche industry. So we thought: let’s get ahead of it.

We initially wanted to start as a website. And we got advice from another founder to start as a newsletter instead. We’ve built out some great partnerships and gotten a great group of readers that way.

DCOB: Did you always know you wanted to be an entrepreneur? How did you launch your career in journalism, and how was DePaul part of that?

DA: I’ve always had this entrepreneurial mindset. When I was a kid, I started this jewelry business on Etsy. During the pandemic, I started a sweatshirt line. I’m always looking for a project.

I have done the majority of my education at DePaul. That just goes to show how resourceful DePaul is and how much they offer to their students. And how well they connect with their students and stay in touch with them.

I had so many great experiences at DePaul. I studied abroad, primarily focusing on the EU and NATO. I had some really dedicated journalism professors who helped me figure out an independent study. That’s an amazing thing about DePaul. They’re so resourceful. They’re so dedicated to making sure students can pursue what they want.

DCOB: Around the time you launched The Sidelines, you were pivoting from a career in journalism to one in business. Can you talk about that transition?

DA: In 2020, I was working at ABC. I was going into the office every day. I was covering the pandemic, the election, everything that was going on. It was an eye-opening experience. But after awhile, I realized I needed a break from hard news.

A panel of five woman at the front of a meeting room, seen from an audience perspective with three rows of attentive listeners aheadI was able to enroll in DePaul’s MBA program full time — and fully online. During that time, in the summer of 2021, I started working at Goldman. I was working full time and going to school full time. It was important to me to do my MBA side-by-side with working at a bank, with working in business.

I graduated with my MBA last summer. It was a great experience – great connections, great networking.

DCOB: You’ve gotten the chance to speak to so many inspiring athletes and founders. What’s stuck with you about those conversatiA screenshot of a TV program in which two women are interviewed. The chiron reads: Why is now the time for a female focus in sports?ons?

DA: There’s this question I always ask: What is your biggest piece of advice to a woman trying to break barriers in the sports industry? Their responses are so awesome.

A lot of them have talked about the need to push through. They’ve talked about not taking no for an answer. When you get criticism, it means you’re doing something right. That’s really stuck with me.

When we launched The Sidelines, people had so many questions. They were skeptical if people were going to read it. But facing criticism was my favorite part of it. Because criticism means that you’re reaching people.

Hearing criticism is also really important because, sometimes, you need a vision from the outside. As a founder, it’s easy to get tunnel vision. We’ve actually ended up incorporating content in response to criticism.

DCOB: What does entrepreneurship mean to you?

DA: Freedom. Entrepreneurship means having an idea and being able to bring it to life. And I think there is freedom in that. You create your own power. You’re doing it for yourself. And you’re doing it for the people who work with you, and work for you, and for the audience that you are creating.

AI Insights and Consumer Neuroscience: Faculty Research at the Technological Frontier

Meredith Carroll Scholarly Pursuits , , , ,

By Jamie Merchant

A neon sign reading "The Future is Yours to Create" The hype has been extraordinary.

Over the past two years, news outlets have blanketed the public with stories about the impact of large-language models (LLMs), or “artificial intelligence,” and their profound implications for human civilization. The CEO of Tesla and billionaire investor, Elon Musk, warns that the technology represents one of “humanity’s biggest threats.” Other commentators predict a more benign future in which AI liberates us from toil, taking over the mundane tasks of office work.

With conflicting reports like these, one could be forgiven for feeling confused.

Putting the hype aside, what are the facts on the ground? How is this emerging technology actually used by businesses and organizations?

At DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business, new faculty in the Department of Marketing are cutting through the headlines to investigate the promise, and the limits, of LLMs for modern businesses.

One innovative use of LLM’s is for producing “synthetic data”, AI-generated responses that simulate humans in order to inform business intelligence. “How good is AI at really representing human variety?” asked Ignacio Luri, an Assistant Professor of Marketing at Driehaus. “That’s something I’m skeptical about. But it’s happening, so I’m studying it.”

Two men with Driehaus scarves engaged in an animated discussion
Luri, at right, in the Beta Hub

Luri, whose background is in marketing and linguistics, also studies what he calls the “market conversation”: the dialogue that unfolds around companies, consumers, and the brands that connect them. His current research focuses on the uses of AI analytics for studying that conversation. “I mostly study big data,” he said, referring to the modern study of human behavior based on very large data sets. “But I also have a qualitative toolkit.

“The market conversation is very cultural at heart,” he explained. “It happens in a cultural context. It can be really tempting to take a dataset and just crunch the numbers. But we’re talking about people. When we’re talking about the consumer conversation, things happen in a context – always. Who said that? When? Why? In what context? To whom?”

In other words: how consumers see brands, and conversely, how companies understand their customers, are both products of an ongoing dialogue between them. And, like any dialogue, the market conversation unfolds in the assumptions, habits, and beliefs that characterize particular people in a particular community at a particular point in time – that is, in all the messiness of human communication.

How apt are large language models to capture the subtle nuances of human speech, or the unique meanings that attach to specific words for a given community? Amidst all the enthusiasm for AI, Luri insists on the importance of not losing sight of the human element – the inherently contextual nature of communication.

“All that matters. It’s important not to abstract away from all that reality.”

 

As with generative AI, buzzwords swirl around the emerging field of neuromarketing. According to the Harvard Business Review, this new field “studies the brain to predict and potentially even influence consumer behavior and decision making.” One can easily imagine the value of this technology for businesses.

Such is the potential, but how does it work in practice? Most importantly, what are the real advantages and limits of the technology?

“With neuromarketing, I always say it’s a supplement, not a replacement, for traditional marketing research,” said Jennifer Tatara, Assistant Professor of Marketing at Driehaus.

A computer with a web cam poised on the top and an article about eye-tracking software displayed on the screen
A computer in the Beta Hub equipped with neuromarketing research software

Tatara works at the cutting edge of the neuromarketing field, which mines insights from psychology, marketing, and economics to look at the science behind consumer decision-making. Neuromarketing introduces biometric data into the study of consumer behavior, assisting researchers with an age-old question: what motivates people to make the decisions they do?

Marketing researchers and professionals, of course, are interested in a specific subset of people: consumers.

“We can use these tools to see into the decision-making process in a different way,” said Tatara, “to get into the black box of decision-making. We need a wide range of tools to get the full picture. But without biometric tools, you’re missing a piece of that picture.”

Some of these tools might be familiar. Electroencephalograms, for instance, gauge mental activity by tracking the small electrical impulses given off by the brain in response to stimuli. But some are more exotic: eye-tracking software yields insights into where consumers’ focus is drawn. Galvanic skin response, a measure of minuscule amounts of sweat, correlates with subjects’ emotional arousal.

Tatara emphasizes the potential of these tools to help both consumers and businesses make better, more satisfying decisions. But she is also quick to deflate the exaggerated claims sometimes made on its behalf, and to point to the ethical dimensions of this new field. As she puts it, “there’s no magical ‘buy’ button in the brain – this isn’t mind control.”

“Like with any new tool, there are ways to use it positively and ways to use it negatively. As marketers with access to these tools, it’s our job to make sure we’re not only selling, but we’re also helping. With a better understanding of how people make decisions, we can help them make better decisions.

“That’s why I’m happy that DePaul is taking an active role in teaching these tools. Here, faculty and students study and apply these tools; we’re doing it ethically, and we’re doing it to help consumers, at the end of the day.”

Finding your Towering Strength: Paula Price’s (BUS ’82) Extraordinary Career

Meredith Carroll Alumni Profiles, Features , , , ,

Paula Price (BUS ’82) shares her insights from an extraordinary career as a leader

By Meredith Carroll

Look at Paula Price’s (BUS ’82) resume, and it could be tempting to split it in two.

There’s her leadership experience, as extensive as it is varied. There’s her tenure as CFO for multiple Fortune 500 companies; her years of teaching for Harvard Business School; and her current role as an independent board director for four major, publicly traded companies.

And then there’s the part of her career that started right here at DePaul. The part where she mastered accountancy, the “language of business.” The part she spent on the ground, immersed in the many small but critical details that keep businesses running.

It is easy to imagine these two phases as diametrically opposed: first the view from the ground, and then the view from 30,000 feet. First the microscope, and then the panoramic lens.

Diametrically opposed, that is, until you hear Price tell her story.

A Tale of Dedication to Curiosity and Craft

Photos of Price on stage in conversation with Sulin Ba, Dean of the Driehaus College of Business, on April 22 (Photo credit | Working Anchor)

On April 22, Paula Price returned to DePaul to share insights from her career. She was the first speaker in the college’s Executive Speaker Series: a series, established with a gift from Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91) designed to help DePaul students envision and embark on their own paths to success.

Sitting across a small stage from Dean Sulin Ba, Price speaks in the measured tone of an experienced leader. She chooses each word with care and clarity. She is passionate about taking the time to get it right — whether “it” is a major decision in a corporate boardroom, or a visit to her alma mater.

What shines through above all else, though, is Price’s commitment to curiosity.

She lights up when talking about her early career. You can see the student in her; the young DePaul graduate, eager to master a notoriously challenging discipline.

“I spent the first several years of my career in public accounting really honing my skills and honing my craft,” she recalls. After that came a tenure in industry, when she began working with senior executives.

“What they wanted to know,” she says, “was: ‘is this a good business idea? Does this create value for our shareholders? Does this idea have a good return?’ It became very evident to me that accounting should do more than talk about the past. It should illuminate the path forward.”

It is the first of many moments of clarity – in the way Price speaks about the world of business, in the way she charted her own course through it. That fundamental insight led her to the University of Chicago, where she earned her MBA in finance and strategy. She became obsessed with putting her insight into action.

“How do you create financial models for looking at new product lines? For looking at acquisitions? For looking at research and development projects?” she remembers asking herself. “I just began building all these models. People knew that I was modeling these things. And they were asking me to work with them. They were asking me to lend my models to them.”

“I kind of thought,” she adds with a smile, “I could build a financial model for anything.”

From left to right: Malik Murray (BUS ’96, MBA ’04), Dean Sulin Ba, Laura Kohl (MBA ’94), Paula Price (BUS ’82) and Cory Gunderson (BUS ’91). Murray, Kohl and Gunderson are all members of the Driehaus Business Advisory Council. (Photo credit | Working Anchor)

Price’s curiosity, and the keen insights it generated, propelled her to the C-suite.

“Even as a CFO, the idea of fusing accounting, finance and strategy together was essential,” she says. “It was essential to telling the story of our business, to telling the story of our strategies and how they created value. To telling the story of what they would do in the future.”

There’s such clarity to the way she tells her story that it can be hard to imagine her path as anything other than foreordained. Hard to remember, too, that her time as a top leader spanned multiple major financial crises.

When Price looks back on moments of turmoil, it’s her dual perspective she returns to. Her ability to see the big picture without losing sight of the small but crucial details. To keep her eyes on the horizon without losing sight of the world around her.

“The biggest role of the CFO is to create space for innovation,” she says, when asked about difficult decisions she has faced. “And economic downturns often coincide with the greatest need to invest in innovation. That leads to tough decisions.

“What’s hard,” she adds, “is that at the end of those kinds of decisions are people.”

The People Factor

And that’s what Price returns to, what she never loses sight of in telling her story: people.

During her visit, she is asked about her seemingly inexhaustible career: the way her resume encompasses seven top leadership positions at major, publicly traded companies. That’s not to speak of her time teaching the next generation of leaders at Harvard Business School, or her service to nonprofits and her community.

It was all simpler, she says, than it might look from the outside.

“For every major move in my career,” Price says, “I can point to a relationship that is based on trust. Trust in my work. Trust in my abilities. Trust in my integrity. These relationships – they lead places. Connections lead places. Every person. Every change. Whether it’s moving to London. Moving back to the U.S. Moving into teaching. Moving out of teaching. Pivoting back into corporate. Pivoting onto boards. I can point to a person. For each move, I can point to a person.”

“You can’t be my friend overnight,” she quips, later, when Dean Ba points out that many of her friendships have lasted decades. In fact, some of them have lasted since high school. Two of her friends from her days at what was then called Jones Commercial High School sit in the front row, laughing. All night, they’ve been cheering her on.

Price and Dean Sulin Ba pose with two of Price’s close friends, both of whom attended DePaul alongside her: Charlena Griggs (far left) and Aaron Tolbert (BUS ’82, far right)
(Photo credit | Working Anchor)

Price sums up her advice to the students and young alumni in the audience by reflecting on her own career and the principles that have guided it:

“I have four pieces of advice. The first is: to find your towering strength. That is, the thing that distinguishes you from the next person. And, when you find it? Own it, hone it, and leverage it.

“The second, third, and fourth, is to: Build great relationships. Build great relationships. Build great relationships.”