Wharton Partnership

Dr. Mario Moussa

Co-Director

Wharton Strategic Persuasion Workshop
Philadelphia, PA

Dr. Moussa advises senior leaders about strategy and competitiveness. His clients include many of the top companies and organizations in the world. A specialist in large-scale change initiatives, collaboration, and negotiation, he has led consulting projects at major insurance companies, top pharmaceutical corporations and banks, leading universities, and financial services firms.

Dr. Moussa is Co-Director of the Wharton Strategic Persuasion Workshop. He has also led the design of many customized Wharton leadership development programs for executives in the pharmaceutical, insurance, banking and energy industries, corporate security managers, non-profit executive directors, and physicians. In addition, he is an Adjunct Senior Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics and a Senior Consultant at Penn’s Fels Institute of Government. He regularly delivers keynote presentations and workshops for clients around the world. He has spoken to thousands of executives in Hong Kong, Shanghai, Istanbul, Sao Paolo, Delhi, Mumbai and Paris, as well as cities across the U.S. He has been a featured speaker at national conferences held by Cigna, Disney, and Morgan Stanley and at a global conference of McKinsey partners. In 2003 he was a visiting scholar of negotiation at the Medical University of South Carolina.

A widely published author and public speaker, Dr. Moussa co-wrote (with G. Richard Shell) The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin, 2007). A recent Soundview publication identified Dr. Moussa as one of the world’s leading “Success Gurus.” His work has been featured on National Public Radio and in print publications around the world, including Time Magazine, Business Week, U.S. News and World Report, HR Magazine, and The Harvard Management Update.

Dr. Moussa graduated from the Wharton MBA program and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago’s Committee on Social Thought. He lives in Center City Philadelphia with his wife and their three children.

Sigal Barsade

Joseph Bernstein Professor of
Management

Wharton School of Business
Philadelphia, PA

Sigal Barsade is the Joseph Bernstein Professor of Management at the Wharton School of Business, University of Pennsylvania where she has been on the faculty for 9 years, and prior to that was a faculty member at Yale University for 10 years. Dr. Barsade has consulted to many large corporations across myriad industries such as Del Monte, GlaxoSmithKline, Magna PowerTrain, Merrill Lynch, the NBA, Oxford Health Plans, State Farm Insurance and Wyndham Worldwide; health care organizations; public and not for profit corporations such as Philadelphia Gas Works; as well as to small entrepreneurial organizations. The focus of her consulting practice has been on emotional intelligence, organizational culture, organizational change, teamwork and leadership.

Dr. Barsade is an award winning researcher and teacher whose academic expertise enables her to integrate cutting edge research tools and knowledge into her consulting practice. She has published in the top academic research journals in her field, and currently serves on the editorial boards of the Administrative Science Quarterly, Organizational Behavior & Human Decision Processes, and Organization Science.  She is also often interviewed by, and has her research referenced in, the general media, such as the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Business Week, Time Magazine, US News & World Report, International Herald Tribune, Forbes, LA Times, Oprah Magazine, Fast Company, Slate, ABC and CBS News as well as numerous national and regional news outlets. Her research and areas of expertise include:

• Emotional Intelligence
• Organizational Culture
• Leadership and Top Management Teams
• Emotions in the Workplace
• Group Dynamics

Stewart Friedman

Founding director of the
Wharton Leadership Program

Wharton School of Business
Philadelphia, PA

Stew Friedman has been on the Wharton faculty since 1984. He became the Management Department’s first Practice Professor in recognition of his work on the application of theory and research to the real challenges facing organizations. As founding director of the Wharton Leadership Program, in 1991 he initiated Wharton’s required MBA and undergraduate leadership courses. He also started and directs the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project; its mission is to develop leaders and enable change through action learning and applied research.

In 2001 Stew concluded a two-year assignment as a senior executive at Ford Motor Company, where he was director of the Leadership Development Center (LDC), running a 50-person, $25 MM operation. In partnership with the CEO, he launched a corporate-wide portfolio of initiatives designed to transform Ford’s culture, in which over 2500 managers per year participated. He brought his concept of “total leadership” to Ford Motor, which created measurable change in both increased business results and enriched lives. While Stew was at Ford, the LDC received major media attention (including profiles in Fast Company, Training and Development, and CIO). Near the end of his tenure at Ford, an independent research organization (ICEDR) identified the LDC as having achieved “global benchmark” status for leadership development programs.

Stew worked for five years in health care before earning his Ph.D. (1984) from the University of Michigan. He has published numerous books and articles on work/life integration, leadership, and the dynamics of change, including the widely cited Harvard Business Review article, “Work and life: the end of the zero-sum game” and, more recently, in the Academy of Management Executive, “The Happy Workaholic: a role model for employees.” Work and Family – Allies or Enemies? (co-authored with Jeff Greenhaus, Oxford University Press, 2000) was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the field’s best. With Integrating Work and Life: The Wharton Resource Guide (Jossey-Bass, 1998), Stew edited the first collection of learning tools for building leadership skills for integrating work and life. His most recent book is the best-selling Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life (Harvard Business Press).

Stew has consulted with a wide range of organizations and executives, including Jack Welch and Vice President Al Gore; he serves on numerous advisory boards; and he conducts workshops globally on leadership and the whole person, creating change, and strategic human resources issues. The recipient of numerous teaching awards, he appears regularly in business media (the New York Times cited the “rock star adoration” he inspires in his students), and was chosen by Working Mother as one of America’s 25 most influential men in having made things better for working parents.

Mauro F. Guillén

Director and Professor

University of Pennsylvania and the Wharton School
Philadelphia, PA

Mauro is the Director of the Joseph H. Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Dr. Felix Zandman Endowed Professor in International Management at the Wharton School. He received a PhD in sociology from Yale University and a Doctorate in political economy from the University of Oviedo in his native Spain. He is a member of the advisory board of the Escuela de Finanzas Aplicadas (Grupo Analistas), and serves as the Co-Chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Emerging Multinationals.

In 2013, Mauro won the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Award which honors educators who have demonstrated leadership and risk-taking in integrating complex business and society issues into their teaching. He is an elected fellow of the Macro Organizational Behavior Society and of the Sociological Research Association, a former Guggenheim Fellow, and a Member in the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton. His current research deals with corporate governance, the role of the corporation in society, the internationalization of the firm, and with the impact of globalization on patterns of organization and on the diffusion of innovations. He is the author of 10 books and over 30 scholarly articles.

Ethan Mollick

Edward B. and Shirley R. Shils Assistant Professor of Management

Wharton, the University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA

Ethan Mollick is the Edward B. and Shirley R. Shils Assistant Professor of Management at Wharton, where he studies innovation and entrepreneurship. His research focuses on the role of individuals in the success of start-ups and innovative projects; the way in which communities of users come together to innovate; and the factors that drive the performance of entrepreneurial companies.

Ethan’s work on innovative and entrepreneurial firms has been featured in the Economist, CNBC, and Fortune. He has worked with DARPA, the advanced research arm of the Department of Defense to improve their innovation process, as well as with organizations ranging from General Mills to Eli Lily.

Ethan is also an expert on the role of games in business. His book on the subject with David Edery, Changing the Game, was named one of the American Library Association’s top ten business books of 2009. He has helped design games to teach entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and teamwork.

Ethan received his PhD and MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and his bachelor’s degree from Harvard, magna cum laude. Prior to his academic work, he was a cofounder of a successful startup company, as well as a management consultant. He won Wharton’s Teacgubg Commitment and Curricular Innovation Award in 2011.

Anthony Palombit

Master Trainer

Herrmann International and Genos Americas
Lake Lure, NC

Anthony Palombit, Ph.D., brings more than two decades of corporate and consulting experience in the areas of change management, organizational effectiveness and leadership development. Specializing in leadership development assessments, he is the master trainer for Herrmann International (Thinking Styles) and Genos Americas (Emotional Intelligence) and has trained over 1,000 facilitators in these technologies at companies such as MTV, Cirque du Soleil, IBM, Microsoft, HP, Target, Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, the UN, the CIA, the Department of Defense, Victoria’s Secret, the GAP, Roger’s Communications and Cadbury.

Dr. Palombit is also a senior consultant for Right Management where he designs and delivers customized leadership development programs. He recently worked on a project team of consultants to develop and deliver a leadership program for 600 principals at a major global bank. Courses in the program included: Sets Strategy and Drives Results; Brings Out the Best in People; Process Excellence; and Client and Market Insight.

Dr. Palombit worked as a change management consultant in the pharmaceutical industry for several years, focusing on the implementation of large-scale process and technology initiatives. The themes of these projects were related to science and operational excellence. In addition, he spent six years working abroad in Europe, Asia and the Caribbean. He speaks French fluently and is conversant in Italian.

Dr. Palombit received his B.S. degree in Chemical Engineering from the Rutgers College of Engineering, a B.A. Biochemistry from Rutgers University, an M.A. in Graphic Arts from New York University, and M.A. in French Literature from Middlebury College and his Ph.D. in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

Roch Parayre

Senior Partner

Decision Strategies International
Conshohocken, PA

Dr. Roch Parayre is a Senior Partner with Decision Strategies International (www.DecisionStrat.com) and a Teaching Fellow at the Aresty Institute of Executive Education at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

An award-winning teacher and world-class speaker, Dr. Parayre speaks, consults and facilitates strategy sessions with senior executives. His focus is on impacting on how people and organizations think, decide, compete, and innovate.

He teaches executives at the Wharton School, for Duke Corporate Education, at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and at INSEAD in France. He has consulted and given executive education seminars on 4 continents, on the topics of innovation, decision making, scenario planning, and strategy. He is Academic Director of Wharton’s Full-Spectrum Innovation program, is a core Faculty member at the Securities Industry Institute at Wharton, and is an affiliate of the Blue Ocean Strategy Network, an exclusive, certified group of experts on the topic of Blue Ocean Strategy.
His client list at DSI spans various industries, including health care, information technology, financial services, energy, consumer goods, and defense. He has consulted with organizations in health care (Abbott Laboratories, Alcon, AstraZeneca, Baxter Healthcare, Bristol Myers Squibb, Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, GlaxoSmithKline, Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, Humana, J&J, Mayo Clinic, Medtronic, Novartis, Pfizer, Schering-Plough, UnitedHealth Group, Wyeth); in information technology and telecommunications (3Com, Alcatel, Comcast, EDS, Lucent Technologies, MCI, Microsoft, Progress Software, Texas Instruments); in financial services (American Re-Insurance, Bank of Montreal, Chubb, Credit Suisse, Investors Group, Liberty Mutual, Merrill Lynch, National Australia Bank, New York Life, Pershing, PNC Bank, Selective Insurance, US Federal Reserve, Wells Fargo, and numerous credit unions); and in a variety of other industries such as aviation (American Airlines, Cessna), defense (BAE Systems, Litton Industries, Lockheed Martin), retail and consumer goods & services and food (ARAMARK, Cargill, Coca Cola, CVS, Givaudan, InBev, Pepsi Bottling, SC Johnson, Walgreens), energy (Citgo, Conoco Philips, Entergy, Marathon Oil, US BioEnergy), as well as Ace Hardware, BASF, Bethlehem Steel, Brunswick Corporation, The Conservation Fund, Disney, GE, Illinois Tool Works, John Deere, Knight Ridder, NBC Universal, Philips, The US Olympic Committee, and others.

He was previously a Senior Fellow in the Mack Center for Technological Innovation at the Wharton School, and was on the faculty at the Cox School of Business at SMU, where he won numerous MBA teaching awards. His research work has been published in a variety of academic journals, industry reports, and trade publications. He holds an undergraduate degree in operations research and mathematics magna cum laude from the University of Ottawa, a Master’s degree in engineering-economic systems from Stanford University, and a Ph.D. in business strategy from the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Kathy Pearson

Associate Professor
Operations & Information Management

Wharton School of Business
Philadelphia, PA

Dr. Kathy Pearson serves as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations and Information Management Department at The Wharton School.  She has taught operations management courses in the MBA program and Executive Master’s of Technology Management programs as well as Probability and Statistics, Simulation Modeling, and other courses for the department and the University of Pennsylvania. In 2006, Dr. Pearson was honored with the “Goes above and beyond the call of duty” award by the 2007 Wharton MBA class. Dr. Pearson is also a senior consultant and Director, Executive Education for Decision Strategies International (DSI), a management consulting firm focused on scenario-based strategic planning and decision-making.

Dr. Pearson is heavily involved in Executive Education through DSI at The Wharton School, Duke CE, and the Institute for Management Studies, teaching on a variety of topics such as Critical Thinking, Scenario Planning, Strategic Decision Making, Bridging the Divide Between Strategy and Execution, and Stakeholder Analysis. As Academic Director for many programs, she is responsible for the design of the academic curriculum, the integration of the material, and the overall educational quality of the program. Many of her clients are in the financial services and health care fields, but she has also worked with executives from a wide variety of industries, including professional services, the technology field, and the manufacturing sector. Dr. Pearson has presented to senior leadership audiences across the world and has taught at Cedep at INSEAD in Fountainebleau, France.

Dr. Pearson’s industrial experience includes analytical support for the pharmaceutical industry and other health care systems as well as the Department of Defense. She has been involved in strategic planning for a number of organizations across industries and specializes in providing decision process and analysis support to mid and senior level leaders.

Dr. Pearson received her B.S. degree in theoretical mathematics from Auburn University, her M.S. degree in Decision Sciences from Georgia State University, and her Ph.D. in industrial engineering (concentration in statistics) from Northwestern University.

G. Richard Shell

Professor of Legal Studies,
Business Ethics, and Management

Wharton School of Business
Philadelphia, PA

G. Richard Shell is the Thomas Gerrity Professor of Legal Studies, Business Ethics, and Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since 1986. He is a senior member of the faculty and has led a number of School-wide initiatives, including the 2010 redesign of the MBA program. As a teacher, he is the Academic Director for two Wharton executive education programs: The Executive Negotiation Workshop and the Strategic Persuasion Workshop. He is also the author of three books: The Art of Woo: Using Strategic Persuasion to Sell Your Ideas (Portfolio/Penguin 2007) (with Mario Moussa), Bargaining for Advantage: Negotiation Strategies for Reasonable People (2nd Edition, Penguin 2006), and a work on competitive strategy and law entitled Make the Rules or Your Rivals Will (Crown Business 2004).

Professor Shell is an internationally recognized expert in negotiations, persuasion, and strategy, as well as an award-winning teacher. He has lectured to some of the world’s most influential corporate, nonprofit and political leaders at venues such as the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland and the World Negotiation Forum in New York City. Wharton students have honored Professor Shell with numerous teaching prizes, and his professional peers have recognized his scholarly contributions to the dispute resolution field by giving his work some of their top awards. BusinessWeek’s bi-annual “Guide to the Best Business Schools” has consistently listed Professor Shell as one of the Wharton School’s top professors based on polls of Wharton School graduates.

As a consultant, Professor Shell has worked for over 100 business firms and nonprofit organizations. His clients include: Google, General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Citibank, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, Merck & Company, Hewlett-Packard, Enterprise Rent-a-Car, Christie’s, the Pew Charitable Trusts, American Association of Medical Colleges, the Teamsters, and the United Food and Commercial Workers International. He has also worked closely with the several groups within the United States Special Operations Command and the Crisis Negotiation Unit of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

As a scholar, Professor Shell has published widely on the subjects of negotiation, dispute resolution, and strategy in leading business and legal journals. He has been a Visiting Scholar at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, testified before Congress on public policy questions related to litigation and dispute resolution, and published opinion articles for such publications as Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Boston Globe, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. His books are available in over fourteen languages.