In the Spring 2025 Business Exchange, Business Education with a Purpose

May 27, 2025 Sulin Ba Notes from the Dean business analytics, cta depaul, depaul alumni, experiential learning, institute for housing studies

Dear alumni and friends of DePaul’s Driehaus College of Business:

Welcome to the spring 2025 issue of the Business Exchange!

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

This year has been full of exciting news at Driehaus.

Our students and faculty are partnering with the CTA to imagine how entrepreneurs can revitalize communities.

They’re working with the sixth largest privately held company in America to find the insights hidden in data.

And they’re charting the hidden landscape of affordable housing in Chicago, g

iving communities valuable tools to advocate for their needs.

There are a few principles that unify these projects.

A Driehaus education has a purpose: Guided by expert faculty, our students are jumping straight into the real world. They’re wading through complications and complexity. And they’re getting to see their ideas and insights make a real difference.
A Driehaus education has an impact: Our students and researchers bring a fresh perspective to the challenges, large and small, that businesses face today. Our partnerships are win/win opportunities for the organizations we partner with and our students alike.
A Driehaus education couldn’t happen anywhere else: Each of these projects originated with one of the many personal connections that knit Driehaus and Chicago together. At a time when so much about education is changing, these stories attest to the enduring value of the personal, place-based connections that make Driehaus Chicago’s business school.

In this issue, you’ll also read the stories of two alumni who are leaders in their respective fields.

On April 10, I sat down with alumnus and CEO Julian Francis (MBA ’96) for our second Executive Speaker Series. Our conversation provided a unique window into what it’s like to lead a Fortune 500 company in a uniquely fast-paced industry – and how managing people is critical to success.
Last fall, I was proud to hear that Jenny Ciszewski (BUS ’02) — a partner at Deloitte and the first female president of our accounting donor society Ledger & Quill — was named among the Most Influential Bay Area Women in Business. In this issue, you’ll hear how her philosophies of leadership and giving back intersect.

Both Julian and Jenny attest to the enduring impact of DePaul’s Vincentian mission. Our alumni lead not just with skill but with compassion. And they – you – are more effective leaders for it.

Sincerely,

Sulin Ba, PhD

Dean, Driehaus College of Business

DePaul University

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

May 27, 2025May 27, 2025 Meredith Carroll Alumni Profiles deloitte, depaul alumni, jenny ciszewski, women in business, work-life balance

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

For 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

Ciszewski’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.

“You’re Only a Leader if You Have Followers”: Reflections on leadership from Julian Francis (MBA ’96)

May 27, 2025May 27, 2025 jmercha3 Alumni Profiles building materials, ceo, depaul alumni, fortune 500, leadership

Photos by Sean Campbell, Working Anchor

The house was packed for the Driehaus College of Business’s second annual Executive Speaker Series, held on April 10, 2025. This year’s guest was DePaul MBA (’96) Julian Francis, former CEO of Fortune 500 company Beacon Building Products. In a wide-ranging conversation hosted by Driehaus Dean Sulin Ba, the audience heard about Francis’s leadership journey from student to the C-suite and everything in between, and got an insider’s perspective on how he makes tough decisions in an industry where timing is everything.

In addition to his MBA, Francis also holds a doctorate in materials engineering, which gave him an edge in an industry all about the built environment. He has an extensive record of executive leadership at several different firms, and at Beacon he led the country’s largest, publicly traded distributor of roofing materials and complementary building products.

Francis looked back on his time at DePaul with gratitude. Originally from the U.K., Francis was an international student looking to make his way in an unfamiliar culture. After a period of some uncertainty, he found his home at DePaul. “DePaul took a chance on me,” he related, “and for that I’ll always be grateful.”

After touching on Francis’s fond memories of Chicago and going to school at DePaul in the mid-1990s, Dean Ba and Francis moved on to the topic of leadership in today’s world. In a marketplace crowded with different recipes for leadership success, Francis offered a simple, succinct guiding principle: at the end of the day it is the people you associate with who matter as much, if not more, than ideas.

“I used to think it was all about the ideas, that if you just had that right, the most compelling ideas, then that was all you needed. It would work out,” Francis recounted. “But somewhere along the way I realized it’s not that, it’s the people who matter, the people you support and surround yourself with. Cultivating relationships with the right people is the single most important thing for aspiring leaders.”

Pausing to reflect for a moment, he summed up the evening’s theme: “You’re only a leader if you have followers.”

Leadership is something earned and recognized by others; it is a fundamentally social capacity. It is, in the end, all about the question of values: what do you believe? What do you stand for? Do you demonstrate the values your company professes, and how do you show it?

“Your values are everything,” Francis said. “Do you really believe in the values you claim? What about the people you work with? Do they believe in them, or do they just see them as words on a wall?” In a business environment that grows more uncertain by the day, a firm commitment to one’s values and vision can be a much needed source of stability.

The same can be said for one’s attitude to risk, Francis suggested. “One key lesson I’ve learned over the years is not just to consider the impossible, but to expect it,” he related. “The last thing you want is to be caught flat-footed by something you should have thought of,” he continued. “We can’t take anything for granted. If you always have a contingency plan for the seemingly impossible, then you’re ready for any scenario.”

For Julia Ariel-Rohr, Joining the Faculty of Driehaus is a Homecoming

June 24, 2024June 25, 2024 Meredith Carroll Faculty Focus audit, behavioral accounting, blue demons, career exploration, depaul alumni

By Meredith Carroll

Julia Ariel-Rohr mid-lecture — Photo by Kathy Hillegonds

The first thing that Julia Ariel-Rohr (BUS ’12) wants the Driehaus community to know is how thrilled she is to be back at DePaul.

“I wake up every day feeling so grateful to be here,” she said.

Ariel-Rohr doesn’t just bring extensive experience with financial reporting and auditing to her new role at Driehaus. She also brings her perspective as a DePaul graduate.

Her path began in the accountancy program at Driehaus, where Ariel-Rohr encountered two young, female accountancy professors: Kelly Richmond Pope and Wendy Heltzer.

“They opened my eyes to the fact that someone like me could be a professor,” Ariel-Rohr said. “I felt that sense of belonging at DePaul. When you’re at that age, that’s a hard thing to find.”

After graduation, she secured her first two jobs in the field with the help of DePaul connections. When she decided to apply to PhD programs, it was a DePaul alumnus — her audit partner, Scott Steffens (BUS ’89) — who advocated for her to have flexibility to fly out for interviews during industry’s busy season.

Returning to teach at Driehaus was meaningful for Ariel-Rohr because of her personal connection to DePaul. But the job was also attractive because of how the research being done at Driehaus aligns with her own.

“In the accounting world, I would say probably about 20% of us are behavioral researchers,” said Ariel-Rohr. “One of the things that attracted me to DePaul was that we have such a strong behavioral group.”

When it comes to behavioral auditing research, DePaul consistently places in the top 15 schools nationwide, according to rankings kept by BYU.

As the field faces an impending shortage of Certified Public Accountants, figuring out how to attract and retain talent will be more important than ever, said Ariel-Rohr.

“When you think about preventing fraud, and financial statement misconduct in public companies, it affects all of us who have retirement plans,” she said. “That is going to be a huge issue in the next 10 to 20 years.”

That’s where Ariel-Rohr’s research comes in. Her latest research examines how insights from behavioral research can increase retention and belonging in workplaces.

“The prior literature shows that a sense of belonging [at work] comes from small acts, from day-to-day experiences,” she said. Her research takes these insights a step further by looking at how factors such as a sense of belonging, a culture that encourages authenticity, and values-based mentorship can increase employee retention.

The impacts of such work can be significant, she said — not just for employee retention but also for audit quality.

“In audit, we’re really concerned about low-level staff speaking out if they have a concern about something,” she said. “That sense of belonging and that sense of psychological safety can also influence their ability to speak out, which can have downstream impacts on audit quality.”

“This [research] can improve our students’ lives as they are trying to work in this really intense field,” she concluded. “And it could potentially improve audit quality as well.”

Joining Practicality with Purpose at DePaul

For Ariel-Rohr, her research and teaching are deeply connected.

“It’s one of my goals to recruit people into a major that they might not have otherwise considered a fit for them,” she said. “One thing I love about teaching accounting is that I view this degree as a really good tool for social mobility. If you don’t have a safety net to fall back on, an accounting degree will give that to you.”

The ability to be financially independent was a big part of what drew her to accounting as a student at Driehaus. So, too, was the flexibility offered by a stable, in-demand profession.

“I often tell my students that if they have dreams of traveling and seeing the world, an accounting degree is a great way to do that,” she said. “I left my first job after a few years and went to travel around the world for a few months. Because I knew that as soon as I got back, I’d be able to find a job.”

Before she enrolled at DePaul as an undergraduate, Ariel-Rohr spent a year living outside of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Now that she’s back at Driehaus, she’s eager to start getting involved with study abroad opportunities.

When Ariel-Rohr reflects on her career, her research, and her teaching, one theme rises above the rest: purpose.

“I know for myself and for a lot of my students, we’re looking for purpose in our jobs,” she said. “Accounting isn’t automatically the first career path students think of when they think about finding purpose in their jobs. But there is definitely a place for it. Every single organization needs an accountant. So if students are into nonprofits, which is what I was passionate about, you can be a nonprofit auditor. If they really like sports: the Cubs has auditors, a CFO, controllers. There’s a place no matter what your interests are.”

As for Ariel-Rohr, she’s found a place, and a purpose, for herself at DePaul.

“Everybody thinks their student population is special,” she reflected. “But I truly believe that being in the city of Chicago with such a diverse group of hardworking students coming from all different backgrounds makes DePaul different.”

“It’s a dream,” she said, “to be back.”