Leeds Welcomes Prominent Faculty Members from Top Business Schools

Seven new professors bring degrees and experience from Kelley, McGill, INSEAD, Ross, Columbia and others to Boulder. ​​

It’s no secret that the best business schools attract and retain the best faculty. The Leeds School of Business continues to strengthen its position as a leader in business education going into the 2023-24 academic year.

And this year, in addition to incoming esteemed faculty, students will benefit from the vision of Vijay Khatri, the new dean of Leeds.

“The Leeds School of Business is known worldwide as a vibrant learning organization for creating impactful research and developing transformational leaders,” Khatri said. “That remains evident from our continued investment in recruiting the best faculty from the best business schools around the world.”

While each new faculty member brings individual strengths, experiences and research interests to Leeds, there’s a golden thread that runs through this cohort: an emphasis on the sustainable evolution of business using technological advancements. Their collective research centers on machine learning, Artificial Intelligence, cybersecurity, and technology as it relates to organizational structures.

Meet this year’s faculty cohort.

Accounting

Laura C. Griffin, Assistant Professor

Griffin comes to Leeds from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin. Assistant Professor Griffin has been published in the Journal of Accounting and Economics and featured on the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governanc. Her professional experience includes roles with Deloitte and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co.

Nikki Skinner, Assistant Professor

Skinner holds a PhD in Accounting from the Leeds School. She is the co-author of the study “Facilitating tacit collusion through voluntary disclosure: Evidence from common ownership” that was awarded the 2023 Kahle Family Award for Outstanding Leeds School Publication. Skinner returns to Leeds after serving as an assistant professor of accounting at the University of Georgia's J.M. Tull School of Accounting.

Finance

Simona Abis, Assistant Professor

Simona Abis is an Assistant Professor of Finance at the Leeds School of Business. Before joining the University of Colorado Boulder, she was an Assistant Professor of Finance at Columbia University. Simona received her PhD in Finance from INSEAD, Singapore/Fontainebleau. Prior to her PhD, she worked as a quantitative researcher for a systematic hedge fund.

Organizational Leadership and Information Analytics

Vijay Khatri, Professor

Khatri is the Tandean Rustandy Endowed Dean of the Leeds School of Business with a PhD from the University of Arizona. He holds the first named endowed deanship at CU Boulder. Khatri is a Professor of Information Analytics and a strong leadership record of accomplishment in student success, furthering research and scholarship, advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging initiatives, and in community engagement. Previously, he served as the executive associate dean for strategy, innovation and technology at Indiana University Bloomington’s Kelley School of Business.

Jason Thatcher, Professor

Joining Leeds in January, Thatcher will be the Tandean Rustandy Endowed Esteemed Chair for the Leeds School of Business. He holds a PhD in Business Administration from Florida State University and his recent work looks at social media and the selection of new employees and executives as well as IT strategy.

Marketing

Gwen Ahn, Assistant Professor

Gwen Ahn holds a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Her research focuses on how to use individual-level longitudinal choice data to increase usage and engagement in experiential categories. Currently, she studies consumer choices in live events (e.g., performing arts and sports events) and charitable giving, using Bayesian methods, choice models, and machine learning.

Strategy, Entrepreneurship & Operations

Sentao Miao, Assistant Professor

Miao holds a PhD in Industrial and Operations Engineering from the University of Michigan and joins Leeds from McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. His research interests are mainly in developing efficient learning and optimization algorithms with various applications in Operations Management.

Other incoming members of the faculty joined the Finance department and include Deanne Stodden, instructor; Amy Brimah, lecturer; Will Robb, lecturer; and Richard Engel, lecturer.