Faculty Profile

Profile

Robert Smelick

Ciocca Visiting Professorship in Innovation and Entrepreneurship, 2014 | Visiting Faculty | Robert A. Fox Executive-in-Residence, 2011

Managing Partner and CEO, Headland Ventures, San Francisco, Calif.

Adjunct faculty at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia. Visiting lecturer at University of Washington; Harvard University; Georgetown University; the University of San Francisco; Duke University; and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill.

Served on the boards of several private and public companies, including Kaiser Steel, Willamette Industries, King Broadcasting and The Wine Group (one of the world’s largest wine companies).

Workshops Taught

Leadership Series

Degrees

MBA, Harvard Business School

B.A

Cyrus Aram

Profile

Cyrus Aram

Lecturer

MBA, UC Davis Graduate School of Management

Lecturer Cyrus Aram brings over 20 years of private and public sector experience in the areas of customer strategy, business transformation, planning, program, change and quality management. He has domain level expertise in customer strategy, business process transformation, lean sigma, program and change management, performance management and business controls, and thought leadership. He is also an adjunct faculty at the Sacramento State College of Business Administration.

Aram has 18 years of experience working with progressively responsible

Paul Bianchi

Profile

Paul Bianchi

Robert A. Fox Executive-in-Residence, 2019 & 2020

Masters in Management, University of Kent, Canterbury
B.S., Managerial Economics, UC Davis

Paul Bianchi is an experienced and successful human capital executive and consultant with over 25 years of high-technology leadership experience from innovative companies like NeXT, Apple, Ask Jeeves, PeopleSoft and Illumina.

Bianchi is an alumnus of UC Davis and serves on the Graduate School of Management’s Dean’s Advisory Council and has been a mentor for students and spoken to students at career workshops and events, including a panel of prominent business leaders addressing ethics and values-based

Judith Kjelstrom

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Judith Kjelstrom

Lecturer

Ph.D. in Microbiology, University of California, Davis

Judy Kjelstrom (aka Dr. Judy) has a rich background in health science and biotechnology education and training, clinical laboratory science, microbiology, program administration, mentoring and leadership. From 2004 to 2018 she directed the UC Davis Biotechnology Program (est. 1986), a novel program that partners effectively across the campus and with the life sciences industry. Although the program is small in the number of personnel, it is involved in a large number of cross-disciplinary projects:

The NIH NIGMS T32 Biotechnology

Rachel Chen

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Rachel Chen

Professor

Ph.D., Cornell University, 2003

Research Expertise Pricing, valuation uncertainty, distribution channels, and service scheduling

Rong (Rachel) Chen is a Professor at the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Davis. Her research expertise lies at the intersection of pricing, valuation uncertainty, distribution channels, healthcare management and service scheduling. Her scholarly work has been widely published in leading academic journals, including Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, Marketing Science, Production and Operations Management and Oper

Kelly Wilson

Profile

Kelly Wilson

Lecturer

Master of Business Administration (MBA), Yale University

Wilson is a principal with Vivid Cyan Studio (vividcyan.com) with more than 30 years of experience in strategy and marketing in both consulting and industry roles. In consulting, she spent a decade as a partner at Accenture and as a principal at Ernst & Young. In industry, she served in senior vice president and chief marketing officer roles with Wells Fargo, Blue Shield, Paradigm and McKesson.

Wilson's background includes a broad spectrum of strategy domains including marketing, sales enablement, performance improvement, operations

Charles Ansbach

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Charles Ansbach

Lecturer

Charles Ansbach has worked with major corporations nationally and internationally representing not only their interests in discussions as donors to major nonprofits/NGOs but also in appeals for support and partnership made by community groups. In those many interactions, he learned why most corporate CSR programs fail and how to fix them. Ansbach has learned what CSR directors must do to manage their programs inside corporate structures and the practical sides of serving effectively in that role. He also was an early adopter of social entrepreneurism in the 1970s before the name of the field

Amber Beckler

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Amber Beckler

Lecturer

Master of Business Administration (MBA), UC Davis Graduate School of Management

David S. Bunch

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David S. Bunch

Professor Emeritus

Ph.D., Rice University

Research Expertise: Marketing research, marketing science, decision and management sciences, consumer choice behavior, choice modeling, new product development and introduction

Professor David Bunch is an internationally recognized expert on marketing research, marketing science and decision and management sciences. His research interests include consumer choice behavior, choice modeling, new product development and introduction, travel behavior, vehicle choice and alternative fuel vehicles.

Bunch has consulted on transportation issues for public utilities, the Califo

Michelle Higgins

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Michelle Higgins

Professor

Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Research ExpertiseAccounting, financial reporting and valuation

Professor Michelle Higgins' (fna Yetman) research interests are in financial reporting quality, governance and taxation. She expands beyond the boundaries of the commonly investigated U.S. for-profit corporation by investigating international and nonprofit settings. Her research has been published in the Journal of Accounting Research, the Accounting Review, National Tax Journal, Management Science, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and the Journal of Accounting and Public

Julie Morris

Profile

Julie Morris

Lecturer and Director, Food & Ag Industry Immersion

Master of Business Administration (MBA), Harvard University

Julie Morris is an experienced technology executive with over 25 years in leadership roles ranging from startups to large Fortune 500 companies. She is currently director of the Food & Agriculture Industry Immersion at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management, having previously served as director, technology innovation at the World Food Center at UC Davis.

Before joining UC Davis, Morris was with Marrone Bio Innovations, Inc. (MBI), an ag biotech company based in Davis, California. She was CFO of MBI from its founding in 2006 until

Hemant Bhargava

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Hemant Bhargava

Distinguished Professor, Jerome and Elsie Suran Chair in Technology Management | Associate Dean for Academic Affairs | Director, Center for Analytics and Technology in Society

Ph.D., The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania

Research ExpertiseTechnology management, management information systems, economics of information technology industry, pricing and product design decisions, management decision technologies

Distinguished Professor Hemant K. Bhargava is an academic leader in economic modeling and analysis of technology-based business and markets. His research focuses on decision analytics and how the distinctive characteristics of technology goods influences specific elements of operations, marketing, and competitive strategy, and the

Keith Weissglass

Profile

Keith Weissglass

Lecturer

MBA, UC Davis Graduate School of Management, 2012
B.A., Psychology, Haverford College, 2005

Keith Weissglass joined the Graduate School of Management as a lecturer in 2018 to teach the Integrated Management Project capstone. He brings to the GSM a wide range of industry experience spanning the private, public, and nonprofit sectors.

Weissglass currently serves as director of operations at an AI safety research center in the Bay Area. He previously held leadership roles at two high-growth B2B software companies, a consumer AI hardware startup, and an international philanthropy NGO.

Earlier

Ashwin Aravindakshan Nair

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Ashwin Aravindakshan Nair

Associate Professor

Associate Professor Ashwin Aravindakshan’s research interests center on learning how brands can better allocate their advertising resources (e.g., budgets, creatives, etc.) across different regions and/or multiple media over time. In addition to studying such dynamic advertising models, his research also investigates the dynamics of customer behavior and loyalty to help managers devise better communication and targeting policies in order to optimize their marketing mix at the individual level.

Mike Palazzolo

Profile

Mike Palazzolo

Associate Professor of Marketing

Ph.D., University of Michigan

Research Expertise
Choice, causal inference, retail, nutrition

Mike Palazzolo's research lies at the intersection of marketing and policy. Recently he has been focused on consumer nutrition, in an effort to learn how marketers can encourage healthier food selection.

Palazzolo teaches courses on causal inference and marketing analytics for the GSM's MBA programs.

Palazzolo earned his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, and his MBA at the UC Davis Graduate School of Management. He received his B.S. in management science at UC San

Brett Saraniti

Profile

Brett Saraniti

Lecturer

Ph.D., Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University

Brett Saraniti received his Ph.D. in managerial economics and decision sciences from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in 1997. His dissertation chair was Roger Myerson, Nobel Laureate 2007. Saraniti is currently a visiting professor of managerial economics and decision sciences at Kellogg and a lecturer at Stanford in the Department of Economics.

Saraniti has taught MBA and executive courses at Kellogg every summer since 1995 and has been honored with three different teaching awards. He has also taught in

Jason Perez

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Jason Perez

Visiting Faculty

J.D., UC Davis
Master of Business Administration (MBA), UC Davis

Jason Perez began his career in the United States Navy as a military police officer. He served approximately one and a half years in Bahrain and two years in New Jersey leading teams of police officers responding to emergency 911 calls. Perez was also given the opportunity to attend military detainee operations school, where upon completion, he worked for approximately one and a half years at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba as a prison guard.

After 5 years of military service Perez returned to college to complete his J.D. before passing the

Prasad Naik

Profile

Prasad Naik

Robert W. Glock Endowed Chair and Professor of Marketing

Ph.D., University of Florida, Gainesville

Research Expertise
Marketing and advertising strategy, integrated marketing communications, and dynamic market response models, including preparing for product harm crisis

Courses Taught
Integrated Marketing Communications, Marketing Management, New Product Development

Consulting
Sales and brand management

Fast Facts

Named Robert W. Glock Endowed Chair in July 2025
UC Davis Chancellor’s Fellow
Led MBA International Study Trips to Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, China, Brazil and Argentina
Co-founder of annual international Marketing Dynamics

Kay Peters

Profile

Kay Peters

Visiting Professor

Ph.D., Christian-Albrechts-University, Kiel, Germany

Courses Taught
New Product Development (Startups), Digital Marketing, International Marketing

Kay Peters is the SVI-endowed Chair of Dialog Marketing and Professor of Marketing at Hamburg University, Germany. He holds a visiting position at the University of California Davis since 2010.

His research focusses on advanced dynamics in communication, customer centricity, and international marketing. Since 2010, he expands his research covering sustainability, digital transformation, startups, and since 2019 covering the latest AI advances

Conrad M. Davis

Profile

Conrad M. Davis

Visiting Faculty

Master of Science (M.S.), Taxation, Golden Gate University, California

Conrad Davis is the Partner-in-Charge of the Firm’s Sacramento, CaliforniaTax Practice. He has more than 28 years of experience providing tax compliance and consulting services to closely held business, their owners in the food and food production related businesses. He works closely with his clients to understand their business and goals. He coordinates with Crowe auditors to effectively and efficiently provide tax services to jointly served clients.

Professional and Industry Experience

Davis works with owners and