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USC Marshall Welcomes 21 New Faculty

USC Marshall Welcomes 21 New Faculty

These faculty bring their varied expertise into the classroom, with a mix of academia, research, and real-world experience.

by: Sabrina Skacan
08.25.24
USC's famous Tommy Trojan statue

USC Marshall and USC Leventhal welcome 21 new faculty members to its ranks. 
[USC Photo]

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As new and rising students return to campus for the 2024–2025 academic year, USC Marshall and USC Leventhal are pleased to welcome 21 professors to its teaching core. The new faculty join all six departments, including BUSINESS COMMUNICATION, DATA SCIENCES AND OPERATIONS, FINANCE AND BUSINESS ECONOMICS, LLOYD GREIF CENTER FOR ENTREPRENEURIAL STUDIES, MANAGEMENT AND ORGANIZATION, and MARKETING, as well as the LEVENTHAL SCHOOL OF ACCOUNTING.

From the C-Suite to the classroom, the new faculty members bring extensive backgrounds rooted in academia and business. These award-winning researchers and thought leaders have made impacts in their field, and Marshall students will benefit from their extensive knowledge and real-world experience.

We welcome the following new faculty to USC Marshall:

DAPHNE BALDASSARI, Assistant Professor in the Management and Organization
Daphne Baldassari’s research examines gender and racial inequality in organizations as well as how firms formulate strategic responses and how social movements impact firm behavior. Baldassari received the Will Mitchell Dissertation Research Grant from the Strategic Management Society, and her research has been a finalist for four different conference awards. She recently completed her PhD at the University of Toronto.

Zachariah Berry, Assistant Professor of Management and Organization
Zachariah Berry studies morality in the workplace, with a focus on how people think about moral values and navigate interpersonal conflicts. Much of his work explores topics related to the benefits and drawbacks of loyalty, the development of moral character, and diversity, equity, and inclusion within organizations. He recently earned his PhD in organizational behavior from Cornell University.

Robert (Bobby) Carnes, Associate Professor of Clinical Accounting
Robert (Bobby) Carnes is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and previously worked at EY and for a NASDAQ-listed company in Honolulu. He brings his award-winning teaching experience, accounting practice, and research productivity to the Leventhal School of Accounting.

Giovanni Luca Cascio Rizzo, Assistant Professor of Marketing
Luca Cascio Rizzo’s research focuses on how language shapes consumer behavior and examines how the words, the vocal cues, or body language can influence others. As part of his studies, he employs a multimethod approach, combining automated text, visual, and audio analysis in the field with controlled experiments.

Andrea Dittman, Assistant Professor of Management and Organization
Andrea Dittmann studies the sources of and solutions to inequality in organizations and communities. In one stream of research, she examines how to increase opportunities for upward mobility for people from working-class backgrounds. She also explores how to improve relationships and trust between police and their communities.

Jonathan Gomez Martinez, Assistant Professor of Data Sciences and Operations
Jonathan Gomez Martinez studies the unplanned consequences of digital platforms’ policies, primarily a privacy policy’s unintended destruction of value in the digital ads market, the inadvertent silencing of minorities by AI-based content moderation, and the competitive implications of content moderation policies.

Daniel Gottlieb, Arkley Chair in Risk Management and Professor of Finance and Business Economics
Daniel Gottlieb joins Marshall from the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE), where he served as a professor of managerial economics and strategy and led the Managerial Economics and Strategy Group. Gottlieb’s research focuses on contracting and behavioral economics, with many of his published papers having applications to insurance markets. He is the inaugural recipient of the Arkley Chair in Risk Management.

Gordon Ho, Professor of the Practice in Management and Organization
Gordon Ho joined Marshall as an adjunct professor in 2022 and has been instrumental in the school’s efforts to create a Graduate Certificate in Product Management, including developing multiple graduate and undergraduate electives. Currently the CEO of Xpertainment, a strategy consulting firm, Ho brings his extensive industry background to the classroom from his C-Suite roles at Disney and Princess Cruises.

Jessica Jackley, Professor of the Practice in Entrepreneurship
Jessica Jackley is an entrepreneur and investor and is best known as a cofounder of Kiva, the world’s first P2P microlending website; since its founding in October 2005, Kiva has facilitated over $1B in loans worldwide to individual entrepreneurs. Jackley’s work has focused on financial inclusion, the sharing economy, and social justice. She returns to USC Marshall to teach Social Entrepreneurship.

Pavitra Kavya-Friedman, Assistant Professor of Clinical Business Communication
Pavitra Kavya-Friedman earned her PhD in Organizational Communication from the University of Oklahoma and earned the Top Dissertation Award from the National Communication Association in 2022; she also received the Outstanding Teaching Award from the National Communication Association’s Organizational Communication Division. Kavya-Friedman will teach both undergraduate and graduate courses.

Nik Lewis, Lecturer of Clinical Management and Organization
Nik Lewis specializes in effective leadership, organizational behavior, and emotional intelligence. Her research focuses on the role of emotional intelligence skills in successful team-building and employee motivation. Her work draws on several years of experience managing cross-functional research and development teams in the public sector.

Inge Lindholm, Assistant Professor of Clinical Data Sciences & Operations
Inge Lindholm came to Marshall in 2021 as an adjunct professor and has taught information systems courses spanning both the graduate and undergraduate levels. Her research explores the synergy of digital innovation and sustainability, proposing that the future of business lies in integrating these practices to ensure that technological advancements are profitable while remaining socially and sustainably responsible from the onset of development.

Bowen Lou, Assistant Professor of Data Sciences and Operations
Bowen Lou primarily focuses on the economics of artificial intelligence (AI), innovation and entrepreneurship, and the future of work. He researches the new waves of digitization and technological innovation across industry sectors through collaboration with leading analytics companies that track technology, labor, and innovation trends.

Quinn Maingi, Assistant Professor of Finance and Business Economics
Quinn Maingi recently earned his PhD in Finance from NYU’s Stern School of Business, where he wrote a dissertation on banking, financial intermediation, and spatial economics, as well as publishing an award-winning paper on climate finance. Prior to academia, Maingi served as an analyst at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.

Marina Mesin-Zagar, Assistant Professor of Clinical Management and Organization
Marina Mesin-Zagar has worked at Marshall since 2012, when she directed the USC Corporate Governance Summit. Since 2017, she has served as a valuable member of Graduate Career Services and as an adjunct professor since 2021. Her teaching focuses on finance, strategy, corporate governance, management, and decision-making.

Georgios Petropoulos, Assistant Professor of Data Sciences and Operations
Georgios Petropoulos’ current research focuses on optimal strategies to regulate digital platforms, the relationship between big data and market competition, and how the adoption of robots and machine learning technologies affect labor markets. He is also a research fellow at Bruegel, an EU Economic policy think tank.

Ike Silver, Assistant Professor in the Marketing Department
Ike Silver studies various aspects of consumer behavior, including topics related to moral and political marketing, word-of-mouth communication, and judgment and decision making. Silver joins Marshall from the Kellog Graduate School of Management, Northwestern University and has published articles in top journals in marketing, management, and psychology.

Jackie Wegner, Assistant Professor of Accounting
Jackie Wegner is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and previously worked at EY audited financial services companies. As a financial archival researcher, Wegner examines how information flows to capital market stakeholders through a variety of channels, such as information intermediaries, unconventional disclosure channels, and social media. She recently earned her PhD from the University of Colorado.

Waverly Wei, Assistant Professor of Data Sciences and Operations
Waverly Wei’s focus lies in the intersection of adaptive experiments and causal inference. Specifically, she is interested in the design and analysis of adaptive experiments while delivering reliable causal evidence with statistical guarantees. Her research also explores the applications in e-commerce and precision medicine.

Evan Weingarten, Assistant Professor of Marketing
Evan Weingarten examines consumer behavior as well as judgment and decision making, focusing on attention, perception, and memory processes. Weingarten joins Marshall from the W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University and has published articles in top journals in marketing, management, and psychology.

​​Elizabeth Woo, Associate Professor of the Practice in Accounting
Elizabeth Woo is a practicing Certified Public Accountant (CPA). She previously served as the managing director and head of audit methodology for Crowe LLP and as a senior manager in the National Assurance Office of BDO USA, LLP. Woo is specialized in the application and interpretation of U.S. accounting and auditing standards (GAAP, GAAS, PCAOB) for audit, review, and agreed-upon procedures engagements.

Yeganeh Alimohammadi, assistant professor of data sciences and operations, and Giacomo Mantegazza, assistant professor of data sciences and operations, will each begin their tenure track appointments in August 2025.

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