Seven new professors join IESE faculty

IESE welcomes seven new professors to its faculty for the 2022-23 academic year, bringing on board a diverse cohort of global academics with expertise in areas ranging from workplace connections to corporate sustainability goals.

The new professors, six of whom are women, hold PhDs from the world’s best universities, and many have experience in business. Their research interests explore relevant and timely issues: using data to predict human behavior, how consumers respond to technology, how increased virtuality impacts workplace equality, how the strategic behaviors of firms impact market structure and welfare, and much more.

With the new additions, IESE’s full-time faculty comprises 115 professors, of 23 different nationalities. In addition, IESE has 69 external collaborators and visiting professors this year.

The new professors are:

• Enric Junqué de Fortuny, Assistant Professor, Managerial Decision Sciences Department

Before joining IESE, Junqué was an Assistant Professor in Information Systems and Business Analytics at New York University (Shanghai), an Assistant Professor in Marketing at the Rotterdam School of Management and a Senior Research Fellow at INSEAD’s eLab for Big Data.

He holds a PhD in Applied Economics from the University of Antwerp, an MSc in Computer Science Engineering, and a BSc in Computer Science from the University of Ghent.

His research interests lie within the realm of data science, information systems, and how to bridge insights form academia to society. Specifically, he is focused on answering descriptive, predictive and prescriptive questions involving fine-grained human behavior.

• Vardit Landsman, Visiting Professor, Marketing Department

Landsman comes from the Erasmus School of Economics in Rotterdam, where she was a professor of Quantitative Marketing. Prior to that, she was on the faculty of the Coller School of Management, Tel Aviv University. Landsman worked as a consultant for a marketing consulting company and was involved in projects across diverse industries. Following that, she was the head of the Database and Customer Research Team of a large commercial bank.

She has a PhD in Marketing and an MSc with honors in Operations and Decision Research from Tel Aviv University.

Her research explores the bridge between strategy, decision-making and empirical modeling. In her research projects, she utilizes advanced quantitative tools for firm-level managerial modeling and individual customer behavior analysis.

• Claire Linares, Assistant Professor, Marketing Department

Linares holds a PhD in Marketing and a Master in Management from HEC Paris. Prior to joining academia, she worked for a decade in brand management at international cosmetics groups, developing skincare ranges for Guerlain and managing a team of product managers at natural cosmetics group L’Occitane en Provence.

The main focus of her research is at the intersection of consumer psychology and face perception. For instance, she investigates the information that people can read in consumers’ faces and the facial stereotypes that they hold. More broadly, she is interested in how consumers navigate today’s changing world, for instance how they respond to technology or to distrust in institutions.

• Maya Rossignac-Milon, Assistant Professor, Managing People in Organizations Department

With a PhD in Psychology from Columbia University and a BA in Psychology from McGill University, Rossignac-Milon was a Postdoctoral Research Scholar in the Management Division at Columbia Business School prior to coming to IESE.

Her research examines the underpinnings and consequences of social connections in personal and professional life. In her work, Rossignac-Milon has introduced the novel construct of Generalized Shared Reality — the experience of sharing the same thoughts and feelings with an interaction partner about the world — as a critical catalyst for forging and deepening interpersonal connections. Her ongoing research examines the role of shared reality in improving important organizational outcomes, like work meaningfulness, job satisfaction and performance.

• May-Anne Very, Assistant Professor, Strategic Management Department

Very holds a PhD in Strategy from INSEAD, a MSc in Management from HEC Paris, and a MSc in Economics from Ecole Polytechnique / Université Paris-Saclay. Prior to joining academia, she worked in M&A and consulting across Europe and Asia.

Her research lies at the intersection of Corporate Strategy, Sustainability, and Stakeholder Management. In her work, she investigates how firms deploy corporate development activities to pursue sustainability goals, in particular through the acquisition of sustainable brands and their underlying resources. She addresses these questions using large datasets, and has thus developed a deep interest in computational techniques.

• Isabel Villamor, Assistant Professor, Managing People in Organizations Department

Villamor holds a PhD in Management from the George Washington University School of Business, an MBA from IESE, and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of Navarra. Prior to her academic career, Isabel worked as a strategy consultant in Europe and Latin America. She has also worked in Human Resources and Strategy departments in the pharmaceutical and energy sectors and for non-profit organizations in Africa and Latin America.

Her research seeks to understand how different aspects of the contemporary workplace affect career equality. In a primary research stream, she investigates the impact that increased virtuality at work has on career equality. In a second line of inquiry, she explores equality gaps that persist among leaders and star performers.

• Haimeng (Hester) Zhang, Assistant Professor, Economics Department

Zhang holds a PhD in Economics from Cornell University, an MA in Economics from New York University and a BA in Economics and Management from University of Oxford.

Prior to her graduate studies, she worked for five years in investment banking at UBS Investment Bank and Moelis & Company based in London, covering the telecoms, media and technology sectors. She also interned as a research assistant to the chief economist at the Antitrust Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office.

Her research interests include empirical industrial organization and applied microeconomics, with an emphasis on the study of strategic behaviors of firms and their impact on market structure and welfare.