UVA Darden School of Business Welcomes Three New Faculty Members

The University of Virginia Darden School of Business has announced three new faculty members, who will join the Global Economies and Markets, Leadership and Organizational Behavior and Marketing academic areas.

Morela Hernandez will join the Leadership and Organizational Behavior area as an associate professor. She received her Ph.D. from Duke University. Hernandez has taught a number of courses on leadership, worked as a leadership development coach for senior-level executives in the executive education programs at Duke and the London Business School, and served as a business ethics adviser for the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke. Her research and interests focus on ethics and how cultural, racial and gender diversity can influence organizational decision-making and practices. She is widely published and has won several teaching awards from the Foster School of Business at the University of Washington in Seattle, where she worked previously.

Kieran Walsh will join the Global Economies and Markets area as an assistant professor. He will earn his Ph.D. in economics at Yale University. He served as an assistant economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York prior to going to graduate school. His research focuses on the link between macroeconomics and finance. Walsh’s current research papers include “Asset Pricing and the 1 Percent,” “Portfolio Choice and Partial Default in Emerging Markets: A Quantitative Analysis” and “The Double Power Law in Consumption and Implications for Estimating Asset Pricing Models.”

Kim Whitler joins the Marketing area as an assistant professor. She earned her Ph.D. in marketing from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. Whitler has served as the CMO for David’s Bridal and Beazer Homes, and served as vice president of marketing for PetSmart. These experiences sparked her interest in contemporary CMO challenges. Whitler’s research focuses on the impact of C-Level roles, characteristics and decisions on the development of firm-level capability and performance.