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Topic: Business

Mick Jackowski

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Mick Jackowski, Ed.D., is a professor in the Department of Marketing at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise lie in brand management, reputation management, relationship management, entrepreneurship, franchise and small business. Jackowski teaches primarily in the MSU Denver Center for Professional Selling. He teaches Principles of Marketing, Business Communication and Personal Selling.

Jackowski has been with MSU Denver since 2003. From 2007-13, he worked as the director at the Center for Innovation; since, he has returned to teaching. Jackowski chairs the Department of Marketing’s Assessment Committee and the Center for Professional Selling Advisory Board. He was awarded the Innovative Teaching Award and the Excellence in Teaching Award from MSU Denver’s College of Business. He also received the Best Practitioner Paper Award from the U.S. Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship.

His written work has been published in the Journal of Selling and the Journal of Higher Education Theory and Practice. Jackowski has given several presentations with the Western Decision Sciences Institute, the Marketing Educators’ Association and the Conference on Historical Analysis and Research in Marketing. His current research projects are “Selling Sales Education: Proposing a New Major in Professional Selling” and “The Importance of Social Selling Proficiency and the Development of a Social Selling Class.” He is also conducting ongoing case-study research in professional sales.

Jackowski received his doctorate from the University of Northern Colorado in 1998, a master’s from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, in 1996 and a bachelor’s from State University of New York at Buffalo in 1990.

Lynn Hoffman

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Lynn Hoffman, Ph.D., is an emeritus professor in the Department of Management at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He developed the course Organizational Management and Consulting, which prepares student teams to form a partnership with local companies. Additionally, Hoffman helped developed the entrepreneurship curriculum for the College of Business at MSU Denver and is the recipient of the College of Business Dean’s Excellence in Scholarship Award. In addition to teaching, he has served in a variety of officer positions for the Westminster Rotary Club and is an active member of the Small Business Institute. Hoffman’s areas of interest are in human resources, entrepreneurial business planning, social entrepreneurial management consulting and strategic management.

Hoffman received his Ph.D. in industrial relations and human resource management from the University of Iowa.

Debbie Gilliard

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Debbie Gilliard, Ph.D., is chair and professor in the Department of Management at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

Gilliard has served as department chair since 2008 and is involved in many school and university committees. She is a faculty advisor for the International Business program, spearheaded the development of the global business programs at MSU Denver and serves on the MSU Denver Strategic Planning Task Force. Gilliard received the College of Business, Dean’s Special Award “Unsung Hero Scholarly Activity.” She is active in the community serving as representative to the Aurora Chamber of Commerce, participates in the Aurora Business and Professional Women’s Organization and is on the Board of the Western Decision Sciences Institute.

Gilliard has presented her scholarly work at regional and national conferences. Her case studies have been published in strategic management textbooks and used in the strategic management course at MSU Denver. She conducts research on strategic management and international business.

Gilliard received her doctorate in management from Arizona State University, a master’s in management from University of Colorado, Denver and a bachelor’s in management from University of Northern Colorado.

Glenn Furton

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Glenn Furton, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of economics at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He currently teaches Principles of Microeconomics, Economic Approach to Politics, Managerial Economics, Policy Issues in the History of Economic Thought and Applied Business Economics.

Furton’s areas of research include the political economy of public health and environmental economics, the constitutional political economy of federalist systems, public choice, law and economics, welfare economics and Austrian economics. He has published journal articles in “Beyond Market Failure and Government Failure,” “Emergent Politics and Constitutional Drift: The Fragility of Procedural Liberalism,” “Money and the Rule of Law” and “Private Governance and the Pricing of Political Enterprises.”

Furton received both his Ph.D. and master’s in agricultural and applied economics from Texas Tech University and his bachelor’s in business with a minor in economics from the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs in 2013.

Alex Fayman

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Alex Fayman, Ph.D., is the chair in the Department of Finance at Metropolitan State University of Denver. His areas of expertise include financial markets and institutions, banking, corporate finance and consumer finance. Fayman teaches Financial Markets and Institutions, and Strategic Finance to undergraduate and graduate students.

Before teaching at MSU Denver, he was an assistant professor of finance at the University of Central Arkansas. There, Fayman also served as the chair of the College of Business Research Committee and an advisor to the African Student Business Council; conducted research; developed curricula and assessments; and taught undergraduate and MBA students. He has been awarded research grants from Illinois State University and the University of Central Arkansas, as well as a multiyear competition grant from Target Corp. Fayman serves on MSU Denver’s Faculty Senate.

Fayman’s research has been published in the Journal of Economic and Social Policy, the Journal of Global Business and the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting. His works include “A look at bank lending and performance leading up to the credit crisis,” “Improving recession forecasts with business loan data for commercial banks,” and “Politics in banking: Does political party control impact bank risk and return? Managerial Finance.” Fayman has given presentations on his research for the Global Business Development Institute, the Southern Economic Association and the International Finance and Banking Society, among others. He is working on developing an original scholarship with the purpose of publishing in academic journals.

Fayman received his doctorate in Finance in 2006 and his master’s in Finance in 2002, both from Southern Illinois University, Carbondale and a bachelor’s in biology from Knox College in 1999.

Darrin Duber-Smith

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Darrin C. Duber-Smith, M.S., MBA, is a senior lecturer at Metropolitan State University of Denver’s College of Business, where he teaches Sports Marketing, Green Marketing, Seminar in Marketing Management and Advertising Management courses.

Duber-Smith has more than 30 years of specialized expertise in the marketing and management profession, including decades of work with natural, organic and green/sustainable goods and services.

As president of Green Marketing, Inc. from 2000-16, Duber-Smith was a co-founder of the Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability market/industry model and was leader of the first U.S. industry task force that helped frame the Natural Products Association’s definition of natural in 2005.

He has co-authored several academic papers, including “State of the Economy and Attitudes Toward Sales Careers,” “Student Disposition Towards Sales as a Career,” “The Evolution of an Award-Winning Assessment Plan” and “Gender Bias in Consumer Perceptions of Salespeople.” He has published over 90 marketing-related articles and book chapters in various business publications, and he has been an invited speaker at over 50 executive-level events.

Duber-Smith has been the most frequently-interviewed marketing expert in Colorado media since 2005, and he authored Cengage Learning’s “KnowNow! Marketing” blog from 2011-2019.

Duber-Smith received The Wall Street Journal’s In-Education Distinguished Professor Award in 2009 and WSJ’s Top 125 Professor Award in 2014.

Gregory Clifton

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Gregory Clifton, JD, is the chair of the Department of Accounting at Metropolitan State University of Denver. He earned his law degree at Thomas M. Cooley Law School and an LLM in Taxation from the University of Denver. Clifton is licensed to practice law in Colorado and federal courts of Colorado and Georgia. He has also practiced in the US Tax Court and the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit. Clifton continues to operate a small private practice advising small businesses and individuals on tax matters.

Apryl Brodersen

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Angelica Bahl

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Angelica Bahl, Ph.D., joined MSU Denver in 2004 and teaches various marketing courses, such as International Marketing, Marketing Around the Globe, Principles of Marketing, Marketing Logistics and other courses. Dr. Bahl has over 20 years of teaching and research experience in higher education, including undergraduate and MBA programs. She grew up in Russia, where she started an academic career at the Far-Eastern Academy of Economics and Management. After earning her degree in Master of Art in Economics from Russian University in 1986, Bahl completed a Ph.D. in Economics with a concentration in Marketing from Plekhanov Academy of Economics in Moscow in 1994.

Bahl has extensive experience in international business. From 1997 to 1999, she served as the Marketing Director at the Far-Eastern Commercial Bank in Russia. In 1998, she completed the intergovernmental program “Russia and Japan” where she presented her research project and was awarded with the certificate of “Marketing in Japanese Corporations.”

She is an ongoing educator and researcher who is engaged in professional development as a means to fine-tune her skills and knowledge. Dr. Bahl stays current with academic and business trends, and parlays her knowledge into bottom-line results for her students and marketing education. Since 2013, Dr. Bahl has been a visiting professor in several foreign universities, such as SYMBIOSIS Institute of Management Studies (SIMS) in Pune and Hyderabad, India and Far Eastern Federal University in Russia.

Bahl has published more than 20 refereed conference proceedings and journal articles, including international publications. She has been a consultant to American businesses at the World Trade Center in Denver since 2004.

Sally Baalbaki-Yassine

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Sally Baalbaki-Yassine, Ph.D., is the Professor in the Department of Marketing at Metropolitan State University of Denver. She is skilled in statistics, market research, analytical skills and brand management.

Baalbaki-Yassine has worked as an international sales coordinator at Sovana and as an account executive in the Customer Business Development Department at Transmed, a distributor for Procter & Gamble in Beirut, Lebanon. She is a member of board of directors in the Marketing Educators Association. Baalbaki-Yassine has also conducted research in branding, brand equity, cross-cultural marketing, retailing and consumer behavior; and published an article in the Journal of Brand Management titled “A consumer-perceived consumer-based brand equity scale.”

She received a doctorate in marketing from University of North Texas in 2012, a master’s in marketing from University of North Alabama in 2007 and a bachelor’s in marketing from American University of Beirut in 2005. Baalbaki-Yassine is certified in the Hootsuite Platform and is bilingual in Arabic.

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