Hult Faculty

Dr. Nadim Abboud holds undergraduate and graduate degrees in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from Virginia Tech and University of Syracuse in the United States. He has held academic positions in the United States and Middle East. Dr. Abboud has extensive industry experience having been appointed as a Director of Agility in Kuwait as well as a Director of Services and Consulting at EXE Technologies and served on the Operations Research Staff of United Airlines. With this background, he has in depth experience of the logistics sector in the Gulf and wider MENA region, as well as an appreciation of the most recent research in the field.

Professor Amdur has over thirty years of line, staff and executive policy experience in engineering, manufacturing, computer systems and education settings. He is President of Amdur Associates, an operations consulting firm that focuses on enterprise and supply-chain solutions. He has taught graduate courses in Operations Management at Northeastern University, Bentley College, Boston University and Simmons College.

Rob has pursued a dual career as a general management consultant and an educator. As a consultant, he has a broad practice in assisting global corporate clients in the areas of change management, strategy innovation, and leadership development. His experience includes working with groups and teams across levels, functions, industries, and geographies to develop competitive visions, solve problems, implement strategies, and build capabilities. Rob holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and an AB, magna cum laude, from Occidental College in Los Angeles. He is currently a PhD candidate at Bentley College and lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Leslie D. Ball is an Adjunct Assistant Clinical Professor at Tufts University School of Medicine and an Adjunct Professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst Isenberg School of Management. He was a Partner with Computer Science Corporation’s Systems Integration Company where he managed an international business processing reengineering management consulting practice and directed the Executive Education Practice at CSC Index. Dr. Ball has consulted with over 100 major companies in the United States, Europe, Canada, and South America and focuses on helping senior executives understand the business impact of new computer technologies. His clients have included British Airways, AT&T, Nortel, IBM, IBM Europe, Continental Airlines, Houghton Mifflin, and Gillette. Dr. Ball served on the Massachusetts’ Governor’s Task Force on e-Government. He is a Trustee of the Boston Chapter of the Society for Information Management (SIM).

Professor Buchin is a consultant specializing in sales and marketing management as well as the travel, tourism and hospitality industries. He is a member of the American Marketing Association and the Financial Management Association and was an IBM Fellow at Harvard University.

Stefania joined Hult in January 2002. She obtained her Ph.D in 2005 from Royal Holloway, University of London.

Between 2002 and 2004 Stefania led seminars in literary theory at Royal Holloway. Her main interests are in contemporary literature and literary theory. She is strongly committed to interdisciplinary research, especially science and literature studies and film and literature studies. She is also interested in the way the city of London and Londoners are represented in contemporary literature and film.

Professor Chartier has worked 21 years in banking within the financial services groups American Express, Dresdner Bank, and Bank of Boston. His banking expertise ranges from credit analysis to domestic and cross-border lending, treasury sales, foreign exchange and interest risk hedging advisory services. As Director of Institutional Treasury sales at American Express Bank in London, his geographic customer base encompassed 15 countries spanning from Europe to the Middle East, and Africa. He has taught Economics and Finance, in various colleges and universities in the Boston area, including Babson College, Boston University, Suffolk University, and The New England College of Finance. Frédéric is the 2005 recipient of the Edward F. Shaughnessy Outstanding Faculty Award, presented by the New England College of Finance.

Professor Yao Cooper specializes in marketing, brand loyalty and quantitative methods. She has also lectured at Harvard Business School, Boston University and Hua Zhong University in Wuhan, China. Ms. Yao Cooper has over fifteen years of consulting experience in market research, strategy and corporate training. Her clients range from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies, such as American Express, IBM and Merck.

Dr. Courtin is a veteran CEO with 30 years of experience in software, computers and communications. He has been the senior executive with Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC), Proteon, Comstream and Sangate. He has created alliances, joint ventures and partnerships in over 30 countries. He holds a PhD in Systems Science from Columbia University in New York City. Dr. Courtin has served as the Executive in Residence at Hult, drawing from his vast experience assisting students in their business endeavors.

Professor Dalko received her MA and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Pennsylvania. She is currently also teaching at Harvard University. She has taught at Thunderbird, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Munich and Budapest University of Economic Sciences in Hungary. She served as Chief of Staff of the Committee of Budget, Taxes and Finances of the Hungarian Parliament and advisor to the President of the National Bank of Hungary.

Dr. Deneffe is also an international partner in consulting at Arthur D. Little. Prior to Hult, Dr. Deneffe taught strategy at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. His main interests are strategy, customer management and quantitative modeling.

Professor Edmunds specializes in finance and managerial economics. A member of the faculty at Babson College, Dr. Edmunds has teaching experience in Spain, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic.

Dr. Guertler has been a Professor of Business Administration for over 23 years. In addition to teaching an elective course at Hult, she is currently Associate Professor at Simmons College Graduate School of Management. She has also taught at Babson College, University of Virginia, and University of Baltimore. She has also done consulting work in Strategic Finance and International Operations with clients including Siemens, Johnson & Johnson, Rutgers, William M. Mercer, Digital Equipment, Sony of North American, Lotus Development, and Bank Boston. Her current research areas include Rights Offerings and Corporate Advantage, Teaching Applied Mathematics to Low Confidence Audiences.

Professor Hancock has over thirty years of experience as a senior management consultant for IBM, Ernst & Young, and Keane. He also was world-wide marketing manager for a division of Digital Equipment Corporation where he created the world's first business-to-business online e-commerce site. He has taught at Northeastern University where he was named "outstanding instructor of the year"; Babson College, and Cambridge College. He is listed in "Who's Who in America", "Who's Who in the World", and "Who's Who in Finance and Industry".

For more than twenty-five years, Professor Hollander has been an independent consultant to businesses in a broad range of industries. He is an executive coach to senior leaders and a team development facilitator. For more than two decades he has served on the faculty of GE’s management development center (Crotonville) where he teaches performance management. Allen also teaches in executive courses at the Kelley School of Business, Columbia University and the Tuck School. He is certified in the BarOn EQ-I™and EQ 360™ emotional intelligence assessments.

Steve has over 25 years of management consulting and training experience in areas such as development economics, education and training, strategic planning, and marketing. He was a Director in the Development Economics and Finance group at Arthur D. Little for 10 years, and spent the last three years with the company as the global head of its internal learning and training activities. For the past 10 years, Steve has been one of three partners in ITSMA, an industry association that focuses on helping high technology companies with their services and solutions marketing. Steve has taught at a number of colleges and universities, including the University of Massachusetts, the University of Bordeaux, the University of the West Indies, and Arizona State University.

Professor Kafi has had over 25 years of business and management experience. He is the founder and board member of Plexus Solutions, a Boston area consulting firm. He served as CEO of Matrix Corporation, and Vice President of LexCom, Inc. and Links International, Inc. Dr. Kafi has delivered numerous presentations on economic development, foreign investment, international trade, economic policy, and national strategies. His consulting activities have entailed cost-benefit analyses, risk assessments, and strategic planning. He has also served on the faculties of Brandeis, Suffolk, Northeastern, and Boston University.

Professor Kasameyer focuses on corporate strategy and restructuring, with his experience spanning managing, consulting and teaching. He has been president of several technology-based companies and the commissioner of a government enterprise through restructuring and growth stages. He has significant international consulting and teaching experience with Arthur D. Little, the World Bank and Hult International Business School.

Dr. Kastner who is a Hult Senior Vice President has over thirty years experience in Management, Consulting and Executive Strategic experience that ranges over 14 countries in four continents in a large variety of industries, from Financial to Energy, from Consumer Goods to Telecom. He is CEO of REDISTUS International, Inc. a management consulting firm which works with C-level executives developing their strategic agendas. Dr. Kastner worked with academic institutions on development projects in Latin Amercia and the US. Director of the Nomos Project at Harvard’s CFIA, He serves as Director on several Boards and teaches at IESA in Venezuela, UNIANDES in Colombia, he also taught as a visiting scholar at UVM, NYU, Cornell and MIT. He is a sought after speaker in international forums.

For over twenty-five years John Kerrick has had professional experience as a manager, educator, coach, and consultant in a variety of settings, most notably Dartmouth College, Outward Bound, Boston University’s award winning Executive Challenge Program, the Center for Executive Development, and his own training and development firm. His current work is focused on effective teamwork and executive coaching.

Joel Litman is a Director in the HOLT Division of Credit Suisse, advising investment managers and other clients in company analysis and valuation. He founded The Center for Strategy, Execution, and Valuation in Chicago. Joel co-authored the highly-acclaimed book, DRIVEN: Business Strategy, Human Actions, and the Creation of Wealth, and has published articles in Harvard Business Review and others. He is a member of the Global CFA Institute Speakers’ Bureau, and has presented seminars/courses at Harvard Business School, London Business School, UIBE Beijing; CFA Societies in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Manila, New York; and at investment firms and corporations throughout Europe, North America, and Asia.

Dr. Marple is a former chairman of Northeastern’s Finance and Insurance department. He was a Ford Foundation Fellow and a member of faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration. Professor Marple serves as a trustee of a number of the world’s largest mutual funds and of a public electric utility. He is currently investigating the financing of US cooperatives.

Professor Murray has focused specifically on emerging markets in management development, financial analysis, capital budgeting, international accounting and training needs assessments. He has more than 34 years of international consulting experience with Arthur D. Little and Hult International Business School.

Professor O'Donnell is an engineer-turned-industry analyst for the telecommunication and media industries. His research focuses on the intersection of technology, policy and economics in the development of new markets. He has studied consumer and market reactions to new communications technologies for the MIT Media Laboratory and corporate and NGO clients. He teaches courses in international communications at Tufts University's Fletcher School.

Fawzy is currently Associate Professor of Finance at the College of Business Administration of the University of Sharjah. His MSc and PhD degrees in Finance were awarded by the University of Strathclyde, and his BCom was earned at Ain Shams University, Egypt. He also holds the CFA designation by the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts. Fawzy taught Finance widely in Scotland for Strathclyde University, the University of Stirling, and Heriot Watt University as well as serving as head of the finance and banking group at United Arab Emirates University.

Dr. Hitendra Patel is Director of the Center for Innovation, Excellence and Leadership. He was a senior leader and co-founder of Monitor Group’s Innovation Practice and was responsible for Asia and Latin America. Before Monitor, Hitendra was a senior manager at Arthur D Little. As a management consultant, Hitendra has made a lasting impact with all types of companies by helping them identify new engines for growth and to develop their own capacity to innovate. Prior to consulting, Hitendra worked at Motorola in the portable energy space and is the owner of six patents. He is also a founder of various venture-backed companies in Brazil, Mexico and the US. Hitendra is the co-author of 101 Innovation Breakthroughs and The State of Innovation at the Firm Level in Singapore and in the process of writing his third book on Thinking and Acting Differently to Make Innovation Real.

Professor Ramamurti is a Jeff Bornstein Senior Fellow and Professor of International Business at Northeastern University, Boston, where he has taught since 1982 (with short leaves of absence). He obtained his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management-Ahmedabad, graduating at the top of his class, and his DBA from Harvard Business School. His research and consulting focus has been on corporate strategy and business-government relations in Emerging Markets. He has been a visiting professor at Wharton School (2006-07), MIT's Sloan School (1998-2000), Fletcher School (2002), IMD-Switzerland (since 1999), and Harvard Business School (1986-88). He has been a consultant to several private companies, to international organizations, such as the World Bank, USAID, and the United Nations, and to the governments of more than a dozen emerging economies. Prof. Ramamurti was elected Chair (President) of the Academy of Management's International Management Division, which has 2,800 scholar-members from around the world.

Lewis Rambo is an independent consultant in Organization Development, Human Resource Management, the Management of Diversity, and the Development of Strategic Focus and Organizational Alignment for clients in business, government and education.

Gladys has taught business communication and writing for over 15 years to clients in both the private and public sectors. She has delivered tailored group training on a continuous basis to several Banking/Investment institutions and to various corporate clients with culturally diverse populations, as well as working with individual professionals. Before joining Wordpower Communications, Ms. Souda spent 10 years in the financial industry. She traded municipal bonds for retail and institutional accounts at Kidder Peabody in Los Angeles. As a broker at J.J. Kenney/Drake in New York, she traded municipal bonds between large financial institutions. Ms. Souda is a graduate of the University of Wisconsin, Madison and holds a teaching degree.

Michele Souda, Founder and President of Wordpower Communications, has taught business communication and writing for over 25 years to clients in both the private and public sectors. She devotes a sizeable portion of her consulting practice to Executive Development. For seven years she served as a full time member of the Harvard faculty. In addition to full time standing at Harvard, she has taught specialized Business Communication courses for Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government, and for Harvard’s Bunting Institute. Her courses at Harvard represent work with international business and other professional audiences. Previous to her teaching at Harvard, Ms. Souda founded and launched (with the late Helen Loeb) the business and technical communication programs at Northeastern University. She has taught advanced Business Communication courses at both Northeastern and Harvard. For many years, Michele had been the New England Director of the National Book Critics Circle. She has published over 150 book reviews and articles, some in the pages of the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, New York Newsday, the Miami Herald, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, and others.

With extensive experience in consulting, corporate and academia, Joanne Lawrence focuses on transforming global organizations for greater economic and social impact, with particular interest in reducing poverty through business. She has been engaged in cross-border mergers, alliances and restructurings, and clients have ranged from BP, Morgan Stanley Europe and the World Bank to small social enterprises, such as One World Projects. Prior to Hult, Joanne taught within the MBA and executive education programs at INSEAD where she was also an affiliate of INSEAD’s Business in Society Center. Her twenty years of corporate experience includes being Vice President, Corporate Communications and Investor Relations for SmithKline Beecham in London, and Vice President of its groundbreaking behavioral change initiative, ‘Simply Better’.

She has received numerous awards and recognition for her work, and co-authored From Promise to Performance: The Journey of Transformation at SmithKline Beecham (Harvard Business School Press.).

Michael is a Manager at Arthur D. Little-Benelux, based in Brussels. He leads the Public Services Consulting Practice and also works with the Strategy and Organization Practice based in Belgium. Michael holds his MSc, M.Phil, and PhD degrees in Government from the London School of Economics & Political Science. He was also the recipient of a Hoover Foundation Fellowship at Brown University, and Visiting Fellow at Oslo University.

Professor Zif holds engineering degrees from Technion, Israel, and an MBA and PhD from New York University. He was a member of the faculty at Tel-Aviv University and lectured for many years in executive programs at Harvard, Wharton and Northwestern, and in many programs around the world. He was elected "Professor of the Year" at Hult in December 2005. Professor Zif has extensive consulting experience in many industries and was previously the president of a start-up U.S. firm funded by venture capital.

Professor Yael Zif has been teaching in the faculty of Management and in the executive MBA program of Tel-Aviv University since 1982 and at the School of Management of Boston University from 1987 to 2006. For three years Dr. Zif was a visiting professor in a joint program of Northwestern University (Kellogg) and Chulalongkorn University in Thailand, teaching Organizational Behaviour. She lectured at Wharton Executive Education programs, at Harvard Institute of International Development, at Catholica Univeristy in Chile and at Central European University in Budapest. Dr. Zif has extensive experience in leading training and development programs for managers in organizations. She has an outstanding record in student evaluations.