USC Marshall

Associate Vice Dean for Graduate Programs

Rahsan Akbulut is an Associate Professor of Clinical Finance & Business Economics. She is also serving as Academic Director of the MBA.PM Program. Rahsan previously served as Academic Director of the MS Finance Program. Her teaching focuses on Microeconomics. She is also a recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching Award.

Chief Marketing Officer and Associate Dean Marketing & Communications

Sara is a marketing strategist and creative leader; previously, she ran an ad agency as a CSO and CEO. She spent her agency years driving growth for the world’s largest brands including Toyota, P&G, PepsiCo, Roche, Microsoft, Netflix, and Westfield. Her campaigns have won Cannes Lions, Effie, and Chiat awards.

Chief of Staff

April is a higher education administrator and culture champion. She has worked in higher education institutions on both coasts including a liberal arts college, a large 2-year system as well as public and private R1 research universities.

Associate Vice Dean for Research

Peer’s research and teaching are in the fields of organization theory and strategic management, with a focus on modeling and understanding causal complexity. He has also been working for more than two decades on the use of set-analytic methods such as fuzzy set QCA in management and the social sciences.

Dean of the Leventhal School of Accounting

William Holder is an expert on financial reporting, and auditing. His research has been published in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accountancy, Financial Executive, International Journal of Accounting and others. He received the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Service (the highest honor provided) by the AICPA and numerous other awards.

Chief Financial Officer and Vice Dean of Finance & Administration

Janet previously served as the Vice Dean for Finance and Administration at Columbia’s Business School. Along with responsibility for administrative operations and financial oversight of a $280 million budget, she was instrumental in the transformational $500M capital project building two new facilities in Manhattan.

Chair of the Faculty Council

Christopher Jones conducts research on empirical asset pricing and financial econometrics. He is an expert on volatility modeling and option pricing. He currently teaches courses in investment management. Prior to USC, Professor Jones was on the faculty at the University of Rochester.

Vice Dean for Graduate Programs

Suh-Pyng Ku is a Professor of Clinical Finance & Business Economics and serves as the Vice Dean for Graduate Programs and Director of the Center for Investment Studies. She is the 2014 Golden Apple Teaching Award Winner for the Full-Time MBA Program. She received her Ph.D. in Finance from USC.

Associate Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs

Professor Maxey specialized in professional development and leadership communication at the Leventhal School of Accounting where she served as Associate Dean for Graduate Programs and was the recipient of the Diamond Teaching Award, Instructor Excellence Award, the Marshall Dean's Award for Community, and the Marshall Award for Innovation in Teaching.

Vice Dean for Teaching & Innovation

Patricia Mills specializes in partnership, real estate, and individual tax issues. She is a co-author of CCH’s treatise Taxation of Partnerships and Partners, and has earned several Marshall and Leventhal teaching and mentoring awards. Previously she spent 20 years in private practice and is a frequent speaker on tax topics.

Chief Development Officer and Associate Dean External Relations

Rachel’s advancement career spans nearly 30 years at USC. She leads a dynamic team that raises transformational gifts, and engages alumni, parents and friends to accelerate Marshall’s trajectory through groundbreaking research, student support, experiential learning opportunities, and capital projects.

Vice Dean for Undergraduate Programs

Ramandeep S. Randhawa is an operations research scholar whose research interests include designing service systems, revenue management, stochastic modeling, and machine learning, and he has numerous publications on these topics in the leading journals. He currently serves as an Area Chair for the Operations Research journal.

Interim Vice Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Leigh Tost studies the psychological and sociological dynamics of hierarchy and diversity in organizations. Her research on hierarchy focuses on questions about how power differences in teams and organizations affect team performance and ethical decision making.

Senior Vice Dean for Faculty and Academic Affairs

Professor Yang’s research focuses on deriving insights on consumers and competition through modeling and data analytics, covering topics like internet advertising, social media, pricing and platforms. She is also an expert in Bayesian methods. She has published 20+ top-tier journal articles and serves as an Associate Editor at top-tier journals.

The Staff Council members rotate on the Dean’s Cabinet so that every member will have the opportunity to participate. Special thanks to inaugural members: Tonii Brady, Aum Leonard, Dan Lewis, Terry Lichvar, Sara McLachlan, Wayne Wilmeth and Matt Wilson.