María del Carmen Triana

Biography

Prior to joining Vanderbilt University, Professor Triana was at the University of Wisconsin-Madison for 12 years, where she served as the Academic Center Director of the Strategic HR Center and MBA HR Specialization. She has over 20 years of work experience in human resource management as a practitioner and researcher. Before joining Academia, she worked as a business analyst and project manager at Intel Corporation in Santa Clara, California. She has worked in the areas of diversity and inclusion, discrimination, human resources information systems, payroll, benefits, and expatriate management. She holds three professional certifications, including the SHRM Senior Certified Professional in Human Resources (SHRM-SCP), the Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), and the Project Management Professional (PMP). She has also completed consulting research projects for the National Air and Space Administration (NASA) and the United States Naval Academy. She is the author of Organizational Behavior published through Wiley as well as the author of Managing Diversity in Organizations: A Global Perspective published through Routledge/Taylor & Francis.

Awards & Accomplishments

Project Management Professional (PMP) – Certified by the Project Management Institute
Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) – Certified by the HR Certification Institute

Leadership

Human Resource Management (Associate Editor 2019-2023)

Publications

The primary purpose of Professor Triana's research is to study diversity and discrimination in organizations. She is passionate about understanding how diverse groups of people can best work together productively and in a manner that is inclusive and free of discrimination. To date, she has published over 40 research articles in her research program. Many of her research articles have been published in leading journals including Academy of Management Journal, Personnel Psychology, Organization Science, Journal of Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, Research Policy, Human Resource Management, and the Journal of Management Studies, among others.

Teaching

Professor Triana's teaching philosophy is to motivate students, to intellectually stimulate them, and to utilize a feedback-intensive pedagogy. She combines theoretical approaches with real-world examples to produce a highly integrated understanding of diverse phenomena in the business world. She ties her own research and corporate work experience as a project manager and HR analyst to research-based discussions to make learning interesting, relevant, and multi-dimensional. She motivates students and intellectually stimulates them by utilizing diverse activities including individual and team discussion, case studies, field interviews, short videos, team projects, simulations, role-playing activities, guest speakers, discussion panels, and traditional lectures.

Research Interests

Professor Triana’s research interests include diversity, discrimination in the workplace, and human resources. She has published over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, books, book chapters, and technical reports on diversity, discrimination, and human resource management. Her research has been published in leading journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Personnel Psychology, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Research Policy, and Human Resource Management. She currently serves as an Associate Editor of the journal, Human Resource Management. Her research has been presented over 80 times at national and international conferences.

Education

PhD, Texas A&M University, 2008

MBA, University of Arizona, 2000

B.A., Business Administration, University of Texas at Austin, 1998