UVA Darden Faculty Members Named to Endowed Professorships

The University of Virginia Board of Visitors has confirmed the appointment of six Darden School of Business faculty members to endowed professorship chair positions.

Professors Saras Sarasvathy and Raj Venkatesan were appointed to professional chairs without term. Professors Scott Snell and Yiorgos Allayannis were appointed to chairs with term. Professors Tom Steenburgh and Greg Fairchild, who previously held term chairs, were appointed to new term chair positions.

Term and permanent endowed chairs help Darden attract and retain outstanding faculty. Faculty excellence — and empowering the faculty to teach and conduct research at the highest level — allows the School to further its mission to improve the world by developing and inspiring responsible leaders and advancing knowledge.

Paul M. Hammaker Professorship in Business Administration: Saras Sarasvathy

Formerly the Isidore Horween Research Professor of Business Administration, Sarasvathy is a member of the Strategy, Entrepreneurship and Ethics area. In addition to MBA and doctoral courses in entrepreneurship at Darden, she teaches in doctoral programs in Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa, and currently holds the Jamuna Raghavan Chair at the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore; a chair professorship from Nankai University in Tianjin, China; and a jubilee professorship from Chalmers University in Gothenburg, Sweden.

In 2007, Sarasvathy was named one of the Top 18 entrepreneurship professors by Fortune Small Business magazine. Her book Effectuation: Elements of Entrepreneurial Expertise was nominated for the 2009 Terry Book Award by the Academy of Management. Effectuation is widely acclaimed as a rigorous framework for understanding the creation and growth of new organizations and markets.

The Paul M. Hammaker Professorship in Business Administration — a chair without term — was funded by an anonymous donor and the Darden School Sponsors. Hammaker taught at Darden from 1962 until 1973, following his tenure as president of Montgomery Ward.

Ronald E. Trzcinski Professorship in Business Administration: Raj Venkatesan

Formerly the Bank of America Research Professor of Business Administration, Venkatesan teaches “Marketing Technology Products,” “Marketing Strategy” and “Marketing Analytics” at Darden. Venkatesan’s research focuses on analytics as it relates to marketing return on investment, customer lifetime value, mobile marketing, and the global political economy.

Many of his research publications have been recognized with prestigious awards, such as the Don Lehmann Award for the best dissertation-based article, the MSI Alden G. Clayton and Institute for Study of Business Markets (ISBM) outstanding dissertation proposal awards, and the inaugural ISBM David T Wilson-Sheth foundation award for long-term contribution to business-to-business marketing. He was selected as one of the Top 20 rising young scholars in marketing by the Marketing Science Institute, one of the Top 40 professors under 40 by Poets & Quants, and recognized among the top five percent of marketing strategy scholars by the Journal of Marketing Education.

The Ronald E. Trzcinski Professorship in Business Administration was funded by the Wuliger Foundation, an affiliate of the Ohio Mattress Company. Ronald Trzcinski (MBA ’71) is the former president of Ohio Mattress and a generous supporter of both the Darden and UVA unrestricted endowments.

Bigelow Research Professorship in Business Administration: Scott Snell

Snell teaches courses in strategic thinking and action, strategy execution, and developing organizational capability. His research focuses on human resources and the mechanisms by which organizations generate, transfer and integrate new knowledge for competitive advantage.

He is a co-author of four books: Managing People and Knowledge in Professional Service Firms, Management: Leading and Collaborating in a Competitive World, M: Management and Managing Human Resources. His work has been published in a number of journals such as the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies and Human Resource Management. He was also recently listed among the Top 100 most-cited authors in scholarly journals of management.

The Bigelow Research Professorship in Business Administration was funded by E. Thayer Bigelow Jr. (MBA ’67) and was intended for a scholar in the field of leadership. Bigelow — former president and CEO of Time Warner Cable Programming Inc. and president of Home Box Office — has also supported construction of the Darden Grounds, the Bigelow Research Fellowship and the Batten Entrepreneurial Leadership Fund, among other areas.

Paul Tudor Jones II Research Professorship: Yiorgos Allayannis

Allayannis teaches in Darden’s Finance area. He has taught a variety of courses, including Darden’s core “First Year Finance;” electives in “Portfolio,” “Valuation,” and “Financial Institutions and Markets;” and programs from Darden Executive Education, the CFA Institute, SNL Financial and the World Bank. His primary research focus is on corporate risk management, corporate financial policies and international finance. Allayannis has published in leading academic journals, such as The Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and The Review of Financial Studies.

He received the University of Virginia Alumni Association Distinguished Professor Award in 2011 and Darden’s Outstanding Faculty Award in 2002, 2005, 2009, 2010 and 2012. He also received an award from The Case Centre in 2014 for a case in the area of finance, accounting and control.

The Paul Tudor Jones II Research Professorship is a professorship in the McIntire School of Commerce and the Darden School, created with a gift from Paul Tudor Jones. The chair supports a professor who specializes in the technical analysis of financial and commodity markets and who will expose undergraduate and graduate business students to the concepts of the field.

Bank of America Research Professorship in Business Administration: Tom Steenburgh

Formerly the Paul M. Hammaker Professor of Business Administration, Steenburgh is Darden’s senior associate dean of Executive Education and Non-Degree Programs. He joined Darden as an associate professor in the Marketing area in 2012 and was promoted to full professor in 2014.

Steenburgh has distinguished himself in teaching, curriculum development, research and service.  He is the course head for the First Year Marketing course in the MBA program and is an expert in the area of business-to-business marketing and sales. He also has extensive publications in leading journals including Marketing Science, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Marketing, Management Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics and the Journal of Accounting Research.

The Bank of America Research Professorship in Business Administration was funded by a gift from Bank of America, formerly NationsBank. In addition to financing this chair at Darden, the same gift created an endowed scholarship and a professorship in the McIntire School of Commerce.

Isidore Horween Research Professorship in Business Administration: Greg Fairchild

Formerly the Bigelow Research Professor of Business Administration, Fairchild is also Darden’s associate dean for Washington, D.C., Area Initiatives, academic director of public policy and entrepreneurship, and an academic director for Darden’s Institute for Business in Society. He teaches strategic management, entrepreneurship and ethics in Darden’s MBA and Executive Education programs. He has received a number of awards for teaching excellence at the Darden School.

In the field of research, Fairchild was recently the lead investigator studying business models and public policy issues in the field of community development finance, an initiative supported by a three-year, $850,000 grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. He was named one of five high-impact research professors and the sole scholar focused in entrepreneurship by the Financial Times in 2010. In 2011, he was the only academic named as one of 25 Virginians to Watch by Virginia Business Magazine. In 2012, Fairchild was named one of the Top 10 Business School Professors in the World by CNN/Fortune and one of the 50 Best Business School Professors by Poets & Quants.

The Isidore Horween Research Professorship in Business Administration was made possible by the late Ralph Horween and his son, Frederick Stow (MBA ’58). The chair supports research in the field of launching and managing small businesses and honors Horween’s father, who founded Horween Leather Company in 1905.