Reflecting on Give Light

In May 2024, Baylor University concluded the most successful comprehensive fundraising campaign in the institution’s 179-year history. Through the Give Light Campaign, alumni, parents and friends gave more than $1.5 billion to support the university’s growth as an R1 research university and to support the priorities of Illuminate, Baylor’s academic strategic plan.

The Hankamer School of Business witnessed unprecedented giving far beyond our campaign goal of $125 million. This generosity provides resourcing for everything from student groups to research funds, to funds for faculty awards and missions experiences for students. The Give Light Campaign quite literally helped shine a light on the transformational impact of philanthropy and the Baylor Family’s ability to open doors for Baylor’s faculty, staff and students.

As we celebrate the success of this campaign, we look forward, inspired to dream and act boldly as we look toward a brighter future at Baylor. Inspired by the University’s new strategic plan, we hold a bold vision for the Hankamer School of Business, knowing our Baylor Family is invested in the growth and flourishing of our faculty, staff and students.

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Update your contact information in the Baylor Alumni Network Directory at baylor.edu/keepintouch

Connect directly with the Hankamer School of Business at bbr.baylor.edu/submit-alumni-news

Trey Hagins
Managing Director of Development
254-710-1982
Trey_Hagins@baylor.edu

Jamie Youens
Director of Development
254-710-8415
Jamie_Youens@baylor.edu

Adam Contreras
Associate Director of Development
254-710-7036
Adam_Contreras@baylor.edu

Baylor Business Buzz

The Baylor Way

Baylor University’s endowment is outpacing all but one of the Ivy League universities. Four Hankamer School of Business alumni working in the Office of Investments are proud to give back to the University to help shape the college experience for future students.

Peer Leader Program Designed to Foster Success for First Year Students

The HSB Undergraduate Programs Office developed the Peer Leader Program, which strives to facilitate supportive relationships among Business School students through mentorship.

Hankamer School of Business Undergraduate, Graduate Programs See Rankings Rise

Several programs at the Hankamer School of Business rose to new heights as recent rankings were announced.

“Light Your Future” Debuts Over Family Weekend

HSB launched a new promotional video during Family Weekend. The video, entitled “Light Your Future,” captures the essence of attending the Business School while showcasing the importance of a supportive community.

Meet Them Where They Are

The path to Baylor University for Pat Bray, HSB Chaplain, has been filled with twists and turns, but he knows God has been with him every step of the way.

Hankamer Hosts Prayer Site on Collegiate Day of Prayer

HSB served as a hosting site for the Collegiate Day of Prayer on Thursday, Feb. 29. Organized by Cindy Wu, associate dean of Diversity and Belonging, and Mitch Neubert, senior associate dean of Research and Development, the hosting site served as a space for Hankamer faculty, staff and students to pray, reflect and meditate on God’s Word. 

A Glimpse of Heaven

Franklin Potts, former professor of Finance who retired in May 2022, leaned on his gift of writing poetry in the face of his ALS diagnosis. Potts passed away on Feb. 9, 2024.

Hankamer Brings AI to MBAs

In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, educational programs have increasingly recognized the need to integrate artificial intelligence into their curriculum. The Master of Business Administration programs at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business are working to ensure future business leaders are equipped with the knowledge and skills to navigate the modern era.

Baylor Hosts 2024 New Venture Competition

HSB hosted the New Venture Competition (NVC) at the Paul L. Foster Campus for Business and Innovation. NVC, presented by HSB’s Department of Entrepreneurship and Corporate Innovation, allows collegiate teams of entrepreneurs from around the world to showcase their business plans and compete for cash prizes and resources. 

HSB Professors Win Prestigious Prize

Four HSB professors earned the Georgescu-Roegen Prize from the Southern Economic Association.

To Buy or Not to Buy

There can be a lot of anxiety when shopping for the holidays, whether that be getting the right gift for a loved one or finding the best deal. Associate Professor of Marketing Ashley Otto discusses her research on consumer decision making and factors influencing a particular set of shoppers who are less likely to make a decision.

HSB Professors Win Prestigious Research Award

HSB faculty members David Dicks and James Garven received the 2023 Casualty Actuarial Society Research Award from the American Risk and Insurance Association in Washington, D.C.

Breaking Barriers in Healthcare: Baylor University MBA Student Secures First Place in Essay Contest

Mariam Fawzy Eid, enrolled in the healthcare specialization of Baylor University’s MBA program, recently took home the top prize in the prestigious Richard J. Stull Student Essay Competition.

In the News

Can Everyone Take a Sabbatical?

Sandeep Mazumder, the William E. Crenshaw Endowed Dean of Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business, is quoted in a New York Times article about whether Americans are ready for sabbaticals.

You Should Take More Breaks During Work. Here’s How to Make Time for Yourself.

Cited in this New York Times article by Department of Management Chair Emily Hunter and Professor of Management Cindy Wu, PhD, who found that people feel refreshed after taking a handful of longer workday breaks or several mini breaks.

3 Ways to Minimize Taxes on Your Social Security

William Reichenstein, emeritus professor of Investments, is quoted about marginal tax rates and the “torpedo tax” in this CBS News article on three ways to minimize social security taxes.

What is the Gartner Hype Cycle?

Timothy Kayworth, professor of Information Systems, is quoted throughout this U.S. News & World Report article detailing the Gartner Hype Cycle, which identifies emerging technologies and estimates when the tech may become mainstream.

Why America Should be Celebrating Entrepreneurs, Not Presidents

Professor of Management Blaine McCormick coauthored this President’s Day piece in Fortune Magazine suggesting that America should celebrate inventive entrepreneurs for the growth and progress they have contributed to the country.

Generative AI Obstacles Slow Down Tax, Accounting Transformation

Gia Chevis, director of Innovation in Account Data & Analytics and clinical professor of Accounting, is quoted in this Bloomberg article about how tax and accounting firms are increasingly embracing generative artificial intelligence for some of their operations, but regulatory and ethical hurdles are slowing adoption.

Video: The “Invisible Labor” of Being an Adult Daughter

Allison Alford, clinical associate professor of Information Systems and Business Analytics, is interviewed by NewsNation about her research on adult daughters, how they play an integral role in maintaining unity in a family structure and the importance of recognizing the burden of the “invisible labor” in that role.

What Rockets a Brand into Cult Following Status?

Professor of Marketing Claudio Alvarez is quoted in this BBC Work Life article about what rockets a brand, like Barbie, into a venerated and highly coveted cult status with intense staying power.

Want to Build Wealth? You’ll Improve Your Chances by Befriending a Specific Type of Person, Science Says

Featured in this MarketWatch article is research coauthored by Joshua Thornton, professor of Finance, on how friends influence financial well being.

Video: Saturdays at Seven: “Both Sides of the Story”

In a Christian Scholar’s Review conversation series, Matthew J. Quade, the Kimberly and Aaron P. Graft Professor in Christian Leadership in Business and director of Christian Leadership and Ethics, talks about the unique opportunities and challenges of teaching ethics today and exploring the relationship between business educators and faith.

When to Tell Your Employer About Your Pregnancy

Offering guidance to worried pregnant employees, this HR Digest article references research led by Management Professor Kaylee Hackney, about the negative effects of perceived pregnancy discrimination on expectant parents.

Wagering on March Madness Likely to Break Record Amid Sports Betting Wave

Kirk Wakefield, the Edwin W. Streetman Professorship in Retail Marketing and executive director of the Curb Sales Strategy in Sports and Entertainment program, is quoted in this Washington Examiner article on March Madness about how overall attention to sports and engagement with fans has been growing since the pandemic.

Is Taylor Sheridan Buying Iconic Joe T. Garcia’s Mexican Restaurant?

Shaun Limbers, director of the Institute for Family Business, is quoted in this Fort Worth Report article and offers his expertise regarding the various reasons why family businesses sell.

Best Small Business Email Providers for 2023

Allison Alford, clinical associate professor of Information Systems and Business Analytics, is a featured expert in this Credit Donkey article about small business email providers.

Alumni News

1980s

Roland Garcia, BBA ’81, was appointed to the  Hermann Eye Fund, a charitable fund of the Memorial Hermann Hospital System. He was also appointed to the Senior Council of Memorial Hermann, comprised of former board members who advise the CEO and senior management of the system. Garcia will also serve as a co-chair of the South Texas College of Law Houston Centennial Gala.

Valari Dobson Staab, BBA ’83, was inducted into the Broadcasting+Cable Hall of Fame in September 2024. Stabb serves as the chairman of NBCUniversal Local.

Kevin Stevenson, BBA ’83, MBA ’85, was named chief operating officer of Ascension Providence in November 2023. Stevenson had served as director of Strategic Operations since January 2020.

Patricia Moser Herbelin, BBA ’84, MBA ’87, retired from the U.S. Air Force Reserve after 22 years of service in the Medical Service Corps as lieutenant colonel. Her last duty station was the 307th Medical Squadron, Barksdale Air Force Base, Louisiana, as senior administrator and deputy squadron commander.

Lori Williams, BBA ’86, joined Caylent as chief executive officer.

1990s

Brett Graham, BBA ’90, was reappointed to the board of the  Texas Department of  Motor Vehicles.

Amy Epperson Powers, BBA ’91, joined the George W. Bush Presidential Center as the regional director of Donor Relations. She most recently served as chief operating officer of a mental health organization in Dallas.

Matthew Thompson, BBA ’93, recently joined Stellus Rx as its chief financial officer.

John A. McRae, BBA ’94, celebrated 35 years with Aramark Collegiate Hospitality in August. McRae moved into a new role as senior controller, supporting more than 40 college campuses in Texas, Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama.

Edna Jo Ramirez, BBA ’98, started a new position as human resources manager of talent acquisition for the City of Waco.

Greg Shepard, BBA ’98, celebrated 20 years as founder and CEO of DallasMaids.com, an award-winning, locally-owned home cleaning service.

Christopher Cervantes, BBA ’99, launched Valorous Advisors as an independent firm that advocates on behalf of and creates effective solutions for clients.

2000s

Matthew Beard, BBA ’02, JD ’05, published a legal treatise, “Income Taxation of Property Acquired from a Decedent,” PLI (2024).

Britney Wekesser Omlor, BBA ’09, and her husband, Chris, celebrated two years of their real estate investment company, Relevant Spaces, LLC.

2010s

Steven Follis, BBA ’10, MSIS ’11, joined Intel Corporation to lead product management efforts for the Intel Developer Cloud, a service for using artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques.

Katerina Roemer, BBA ’11, was recognized by the Women’s Foodservice Forum as a 2024 Change Maker from Keurig Dr Pepper.

Julie Christiana Imhoff, BBA ’12, was one of 40  people accepted and graduated from the Cornell University Executive Master of Human Resources Management program, the top postgraduate HR  program in the world.

Stacey Gilbert, MBA ’15, MPH ’22, was promoted to head of Outcomes, Value, and Access at Previse, a Baltimore-based organization dedicated to cancer prediction and early detection.

Grant Holmes, BBA ’15, completed his MBA in December 2023 from the University of Missouri Trulaske College of Business.

BreeAnna Sherwood, BBA ’15, MAcc ’15, was recently promoted to senior manager of Financial Reporting with Jacobs Solutions.  

Keith Ward, MBA ’15, was promoted to president and general manager of ExamOne, a Quest Diagnostics company. Prior to this role, he served as vice president and general manager of Quest Diagnostics Employer Solutions.

Mary Hernandez, MBA ’16, was promoted to chief financial officer at The Episcopal School of Dallas.

Sarah Catherine Niemann, BBA ’16, was promoted to chief information officer in September 2023 at Employment Technologies.

Jarron Rice, BBA ’16, was honored with a 30  Under 30 award from the Learning Guild due to extensive work with both learning and talent technology.

Marlee Kutzer, BBA ’17, received the following accolades and awards: Coldwell Banker Commercial 30 under 30 (2024), Coldwell Banker National 30 under 30 (2022) and Emerging Leaders by RIS Media (2022).

Callie Anderson Hooper, BBA ’18, married her Baylor sweetheart, William Hooper, BA ’18, on Aug. 27, 2023. The Hoopers have relocated to the Bay Area, where Callie supports Baylor University Advancement and Will works in private aviation.

Bo Mello, BBA ’19, accepted a new position as marketing director for Roni’s Mac Bar.

Melis Uzkan, BBA ’19, recently completed her MBA at Southern Methodist University and received a promotion at work.

2020s

Emily Morris, BBA ’20, graduated in May 2024  from the University of Texas at Austin School of Law.

Rachel Carlson, BBA ’21, started a new position as a marketing specialist at the Hankamer School of Business. Carlson oversees the Business School’s social media accounts.

Christopher Elder, BBA ’22, was awarded the 2023 Q3 Growth Award for Digital Sellers at IBM. He attained 113 percent of his first-half quota in his first year as a seller.

Julia Micaela Miraflores, BBA ’22 was promoted to supervisor after 15 months at DHL Global Forwarding.

Turquoise Nicole Banks, MBA ’23, established her own counseling practice, Choices Mind-Body Wellness, LLC. She looks forward to contributing further to the mental health and well-being of individuals across Texas.

Jenna Meimerstorf, BBA ’23, joined Riveron as a data analyst in the business process improvement sector.

Where Two Budgets Diverge

By Anna Mitchael

At first glance, it’s easy to think all budgets are created equal, and a budget of $100 means a consumer will spend $100 on a purchase. Yuna Choe, PhD, assistant professor in Marketing at the Hankamer School of Business, suspected budgets might be more complex than that. Choe hypothesized that when consumers budget a purchase for others, they actually feel differently about the budget than when budgeting a purchase for themselves.

To see if this hypothesis was correct, Choe, along with Christina Kan from the University of Connecticut and Evan Polman from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, conducted the research “Divergent Effects of Budgeting for Gifts versus Personal Purchases,” which was published in Journal of Consumer Research. The study found that when shopping for themselves, consumers feel good about being under budget and having money left over as they perceive personal budgets as spending amounts that are preferably minimized. However, when shopping for others, they want to use every dollar they initially planned to spend as gift budgets are perceived as spending amounts that are preferably maximized.

“Let’s say you have moved into a new house and you want to buy something for your kitchen,” Choe said. “If you have a $100 budget and you find an item for $80, you will likely feel great about the purchase. However, if you have a $100 budget for a gift for someone else’s housewarming present and you find an $80 item, you are more likely to either look for another item that is the full $100 or add extra items to maximize the budget.”

Choe, Kan and Polman speculated a few reasons why this phenomenon happens. People are likely to spend more of gift budgets because they feel less focused on saving money when shopping for others. As another reason, consumers may become less price-conscious for gift purchases and wish to choose something that meets the amount initially planned. It is also reasonable to predict people maximize their budget for gifts because they experience feelings of guilt; when consumers decide to spend $100 for others, they may feel guilty when money is left unspent. Lastly, gifts are often purchased on special occasions and are considered more special than personal purchases. That could also be a reason why they maximize their budgets.

To focus on this phenomenon, the researchers used a variety of research methods including surveys, lab experiments and a field experiment to explore the feelings and behaviors of consumers. The researchers concluded that maximizing budgets for gifts rather than personal shopping happens primarily because people feel less focused on saving money.

While working on the research, Choe found it surprising no other studies had been done on this topic. When she would anecdotally mention the research and findings to people, they would often contribute anecdotes from their own experiences. It seemed many people resonated with this spending pattern.

From a marketing perspective, Choe predicts the research will help stores maximize consumer spending. For example, if salespeople are trained to inquire about someone’s budget when they are shopping for gifts, they could suggest additional items that maximize the top amount. Additionally, because consumers typically set budgets that are round numbers, such as $50 or $100, offering suggested gifts under $50 or gifts under $100 could be an effective marketing strategy.

In the future, Choe hopes to explore other factors that influence consumer shopping decisions to help increase overall consumer satisfaction. 

It Matters Who You Follow

By Anna Mitchael

When looking at open source projects, Qin Weng, PhD, assistant professor of Information Systems and Business Analytics at Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business, saw lots of good work being done. However, there was also a gaping hole.

“So few open source projects were actually becoming successful,” Weng said. “I wondered how more could succeed.”

Open source projects offer code anyone can access, examine and modify. As Weng explains, thinking about how recipes are used online can help us understand the nature of open source projects.

“It’s similar to how a person might find a recipe that interests them, study it and then change it for their own uses,” Weng said.

Open source thrives on active participation of individuals and organizations by shared interests. Weng and her study co-author, Franck Soh, knew the open source software community website GitHub had unique social media features not all sites had: Project imitators receive stars on their project pages that show a project’s popularity. They wondered if that social media feature could offer insight to the success of some projects. If so, those findings could help other project initiators chart a path to success.

It was actually Weng’s daughter who gave her this aha moment.

“One day my 5-year-old came home from school very excited because she had received a star on schoolwork,” Weng said.

That’s when Weng realized how powerful the motivation of those GitHub stars could be.

To test the theory, Weng and Soh decided to use the number of stars project initiators receive to judge their success on a project. They evaluated years of data collected on GitHub. While the data was enormously valuable, the challenge was that the data files were massive. Luckily, Weng had a decade of experience with databases. To make it usable, Weng downloaded several years of GitHub data into a database and spent months cleaning it up so they could use it for project analysis.

They found having a broad social network was an indicator of a project’s success. When a project’s initiator had more followers and followed more people, the project tended to fare better. This exciting discovery was published in The Journal of Strategic Information Systems in the study, “The Influence of Project Initiators’ Person-to-Person Followership on Project Popularity in Open Source Communities: The Role of Reach and Importance.”

The implications of this study are multifold and can be used in many ways. First, “stars” available on GitHub are unique and many platforms do not offer similar social media features. Based on how this social media feature helped indicate and track success, it would be advisable for more platform owners to initiate similar social media features.

Project initiators can also use the learnings about followers to maximize the benefits of available networks. Those projects that can attract followers are more likely to be successful. Furthermore, following people points to diversity of information and exposure. Instead of just following many people, based on the findings, it’s advisable for project initiators to be strategic about the people they choose to follow. Following random people does not seem to be as powerful as following people who have broad networks. That’s how person-to-person followership can be most beneficial.

On the heels of this enlightening study, Weng is looking to dive even deeper into what makes projects successful by examining characteristics of project initiators and developers.

“We want to explore relational and cognitive variables such as trust, norms, values and culture,” Weng said.