By Lacie Blankenship
Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management is excited to announce that the 2024-2025 academic year will begin with 6 new full-time faculty members.
“At Owen, we strive to have a lasting impact on not only our students but business and society at large,” says Thomas J. Steenburgh, Ralph Owen Dean and Professor of Marketing. “We are thrilled to welcome this group of exceptional scholars into our faculty and look forward to seeing what innovative contributions they will make through their teaching and research.”
Meet Our New Full-Time Faculty: Fall 2024
Accounting
Bin Li, Associate Professor of Accounting
Bin Li, Associate Professor of Accounting
Bin Li joins Vanderbilt Business as an Associate Professor of Accounting. Li earned his PhD in Business Administration with a focus in Accounting from Duke University. Before joining Owen, he was an Assistant Professor of Accounting and a Bauer Research Fellow at The University of Houston’s C.T. Bauer College of Business. Li also previously held positions at the University of Oklahoma and the University of Texas at Dallas.
Li is an archival financial accounting researcher, with his scholarship falling into 3 primary streams: accounting standards and disclosure, asset pricing, and stakeholder-firm relationships. Throughout his work, he seeks to further the understanding of accounting standard setting in both the U.S. and abroad, as well as to broaden the typical perspective of the firm’s financial reporting paradigm to provide a more holistic interaction of the firm’s financial reporting environment with external constituencies in the capital markets and beyond.
Li has been recognized for excellence in teaching in both the daytime MBA and EMBA programs, receiving 2 school-level teaching awards at the University of Houston. He will teach Financial Reporting for both the daytime MBA and MAcc programs at Vanderbilt Business.
Finance
Anna Helmke, Assistant Professor of Finance
Anna Helmke, Assistant Professor of Finance
Anna Helmke joins Vanderbilt Business as an Assistant Professor of Finance. Helmke earned her PhD in Finance from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business. Prior to her PhD, Helmke earned her MSc in Financial Economics from the University of Oxford. In 2019, Helmke was awarded the Miller Fellowship for attaining the top score in Wharton’s PhD preliminary exam. She has also completed PhD Research Fellowships at the European Central Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
Helmke’s research explores asset management, financial institutions, and financial stability, with a focus on non-bank financial intermediation and portfolio theory, including open-end mutual funds and Exchange-Traded Funds (ETFs). Her job market paper, “Will ETFs Drive Mutual Funds Extinct?” introduces a theoretical model that researchers can use to examine the differences between index ETFs and index open-end mutual funds and produces findings with interesting policy implications.
This fall, Helmke will teach Principles of Finance for the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program.
Management
Richard Florida, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Management
Richard Florida, Distinguished Visiting Professor of Management
Richard Florida joins Vanderbilt Business as a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Management while on leave from the University of Toronto where he serves as University Professor, Professor of Economic Analysis and Policy, and Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the University of Toronto’s School of Cities and Rotman School of Management. Florida earned his PhD in Urban Planning from Columbia University and has held professorships at Carnegie Mellon and George Mason, along with Visiting Professor roles at Harvard and MIT.
Florida is a leading American urban studies theorist, celebrated for his books: “The Rise of the Creative Class”, “The New Urban Crisis”, and “The Great Reset”, among others. Florida has also advanced his research outside of the classroom, as Senior Editor at The Atlantic (2011-2019), Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution (2004-2007), and as a Senior Scientist with Gallup Organization (2005-2007). He also founded the Creative Class Working Group, a strategy firm advising companies and governments on their economic development strategies.
Florida will develop a new elective at Vanderbilt Business for the 2024-25 academic year.
Gary Kimball, Sauereisen Director of the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program and Professor of the Practice of Management
Gary Kimball, Sauereisen Director of the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program, Professor of the Practice of Management
Gary Kimball, Sauereisen Director of the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program, joins Vanderbilt Business as a Professor of the Practice of Management. Kimball graduated from Vanderbilt University with a BA in Economics and later earned his MBA at Vanderbilt Business. Kimball has served as the Sauereisen Director of the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program since 2017 and previously served as the Acting Coordinator for business-related minors, and the Director of the Managerial Studies Program. Kimball has over 35 years of experience in board, executive, and leadership roles. He is currently a fiduciary director at Kenco Group, a third-party logistics provider, and Rubicon Investments, a real estate investment and development company, as well as an advisory director at Sunland Logistics Solutions, a warehousing and logistics company.
In tandem with the transition of the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program to Owen Graduate School of Management, Kimball brings his extensive experience to Vanderbilt Business after many years of collaboration and partnership.
In addition to teaching classes in the undergraduate business minor, Kimball will continue to support the operational, curricular, and co-curricular success of the Hoogland Undergraduate Business Program.
Operations
Antoine Feylessoufi, Assistant Professor of Operations
Antoine Feylessoufi, Assistant Professor of Operations
Antoine Feylessoufi joins Vanderbilt Business as Assistant Professor of Operations Management and Quantitative Methods. Feylessoufi earned his PhD in Management Science from the University of Cambridge Judge Business School. Before coming to Owen, Feylessoufi served as both a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at University College London and a Visiting Professor at HEC Paris.
Feylessoufi’s research explores how employees or companies react to changes in their organizational or industry landscape and how firms can optimize operational performance given these dynamics. Feylessoufi was awarded the INFORMS TIMES Best Dissertation Award in 2020 for his investigation into the role of organizational culture in individuals’ decisions to adopt innovative new practices, from blockchain adoption and AI systems to sustainable practices. Across his research, Feylessoufi uses classic and evolutionary game theory to generate actionable insights in collaboration with theoretical analysis using data-driven methods.
This spring, Feylessoufi will teach Management of Service Operations for daytime programs at Vanderbilt Business.
Sina Moghadas Khorasani, Assistant Professor of Operations Management and Quantitative Methods
Sina Moghadas Khorasani, Assistant Professor of Operations
Sina Moghadas Khorasani joins Vanderbilt Business as Assistant Professor of Operations Management and Quantitative Methods. Khorasani earned his PhD in Business Administration, with a focus on Operations Management, from the University of Utah. He also holds a master’s degree in Engineering Management from the University Putra Malaysia. Before joining Vanderbilt, Khorasani worked as an Assistant Professor of Operations, Supply Chain Management, and Business Analytics at the University of Dayton.
Khorasani’s research addresses 2 major trends shaping innovation operations: the adoption of open innovation and the integration of AI and business analytics. His forthcoming publication, “Screening in Multistage Contests,” was recently featured as an INFORMS TIMES paper of the month. For his future research, Khorasani plans to consider the application of modern machine learning methods in innovation, operations, and supply chain management, with an aim to create models that enhance informed decision-making and address complex dynamic and stochastic problems.
This fall, Khorasani will teach Business Project Management followed by Predictive Analytics in the spring, with both courses offered for Vanderbilt Business daytime programs.
Meet the New Postdoctoral Scholar: Alexey Vasilenko
Additionally, Vanderbilt Business welcomes Alexey Vasilenko as a new postdoctoral research scholar. Vasilenko earned his PhD in Finance from the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. His research interests include household finance, economics of education, and empirical asset pricing. Vasilenko will be working with Professor Veronika Pool on investments research during the upcoming academic year, with a focus on retirement and college savings plans.
