Annual Report 2024-2025

Our Vision

The Lam Family College of Business aspires to be a leader in advancing transformative change globally and locally. We strive to be an inclusive place to learn, teach, create, innovate and work.

Our Mission

Embracing the diversity, global outlook, and entrepreneurial spirit of the San Francisco Bay Area, we provide access to quality education. We empower students to succeed and contribute to society through innovative teaching and learning, impactful scholarship, and engagement with businesses and the community at large.

Our Seven Strategic Priorities

Curricular Innovation

We develop curricular innovations that meet the changing demands of the business world and streamline the path to graduation, while ensuring that our students are well-rounded and prepared for the challenges of the workplace. We recognize and celebrate each faculty member for the long-lasting impact their teaching and service contributions have on our students.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging

We are proud of our University’s pioneering legacy in this space. We prioritize diversity, equity, inclusion and creating a sense of belonging in our classrooms and workplace to help our students, faculty and staff thrive and succeed. We commit ourselves to the continual, iterative process of removing systemic roadblocks in higher education.

Student Engagement

We create an inclusive college community by engaging students in meaningful experiences that provide exciting and enlightening opportunities to network and build skills. Our students help inform and shape impactful activities, including dynamic student organizations, professional development events with alumni and industry partners, and leadership opportunities.

Research Activity, Productivity, Orientation and Approaches

We invest in the scholarly work of our renowned faculty who have been trained in the leading doctoral programs and have published their research in leading journals in the field and authored influential books. Through faculty research, we generate new knowledge that impacts teaching, industry practices and society.

Community Engagement

We develop strong and sustained connections, and work collaboratively with the business, academic and alumni communities to execute specialized programs, events, research projects and other engaging activities that expand the knowledge, skills, opportunities and networks of our students, faculty and staff.

Build the Lam Family College of Business Brand

We invest in building our brand reputation to sustain a competitive advantage in the dynamic higher education market.  By increasing visibility and affinity for our brand, we attract new students, create new partnerships and maximize the success of our alumni and current students.

Friend-raising and Fundraising

We cultivate relationships with alumni, friends and the business community.  We value their commitment and engagement, which enhances student experiences and broadens opportunities for them through unique partnerships and transformative philanthropic investments that enable us to elevate the execution of our mission to new heights.

The Lam Family College of Business receives the majority of its funding from state support and student fees, but this covers only a portion of the full cost of delivering a high-quality education.  In addition to campus and endowment reserves, the college is also funded by non-state sources, such as graduate student professional fees, non-degree programs and philanthropy.  Annual state funding has remained relatively flat or declined, requiring the Lam Family College of Business to explore new opportunities to expand non-state revenue sources.

The Lam-Larsen Community Engagement Initiative develops strong and sustained connections with business, academic and alumni communities. Through community collaborations, the Initiative organizes and supports specialized programs, events, research and other activities that expand the knowledge, skills, opportunities and networks of our students, faculty and staff. Below are some highlights from this year’s many activities.

Mini-Grants Program

Now in its fourth year, the Initiative's Mini-Grants program is designed to encourage faculty to conduct research on and/or incorporate external/industry components into their teaching. This year, we awarded mini-grants to the following two proposals to help fund projects benefiting our students and local communities:

(Photo:  Assistant Professor Kyungin Ryu, Ph.D.)

Kyungin Ryu, Ph.D. (Marketing): Assistant Professor Ryu's mini-grant project explores the impact of story type and image placement on willingness to pay.  The project investigates how intermodal storytelling—the alignment of narrative type and image placement — influences consumer willingness to pay (WTP) for sustainable products. This study provides a high-impact experiential learning opportunity for six undergraduate and graduate students who will be involved in the research process. Students will gain hands-on skills in behavioral research, sustainability communication, community engagement, and data analysis, while being compensated for their time to support equitable participation.  The project deliverables will be a customized report and a consultation on how label storytelling can be optimized to enhance consumer perception and value. The project will strengthen university–community ties while providing broad educational and commercial impact.  

(Photo:  Professor Lihua Wang, Ph.D.)

Lihua Wang, Ph.D. (International Business): Professor Wang's mini-grant project focuses on providing access to professional development through partnerships with  professional associations in the international business field. Professor Wang plans to work with Women-in-International Trade, North California (WIT-NC), Customs Brokers and Forwarders Association of Northern California (CBFANC), and Women in Localization to recruit  Lam Family College of Business students to become active members of these associations. The project will help students access the latest industry knowledge, networking opportunities, and professional growth. 

Women’s Emerging Leadership Forum

In its tenth year, the Women’s Emerging Leadership Forum (WELF) is an annual lively, and engaging event designed to help participants achieve their full potential in the workplace. Participants learn tools to help them enhance their leadership skills and learn insights that facilitate their career advancement while making meaningful connections and expanding their professional network. This is an externally-focused event and open to everyone. Each year, WELF features a series of accomplished speakers and interactive activities that leave participants feeling inspired and empowered. 

The sold-out event was held on October 25, 2024, at LinkedIn headquarters in downtown San Francisco and centered on the theme “Unlock Growth Through Lifelong Learning." In business discourses there is a lot of focus on professional growth: how to acquire certain skills, build up a resume, and climb to the top. While these topics are important, the CE Initiative wanted to also emphasize personal growth, since this topic is usually overlooked despite being an integral part of professional growth.

Under the leadership of Gulnur Tumbat, Lam-Larsen Community Engagement Initiative Director and Marketing Professor, the vision for WELF includes stepping outside of our campuses to establish meaningful collaborations with corporations and to expand and deepen our connections with a diverse group of business and community members.

The forum assembled and hosted an audience and speakers that represented a wide range of organizations, such as JPMorgan, Sephora, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bank of Marin, StitchFix, Kai Ming, and Grid Alternatives. The interaction among everyone was highly engaging and productive.

Rebecca Tierney, CEO and Co-Founder of Ada-Marie, took the audience on an intimate journey of her life’s trajectory from being a high-end lawyer at a major law firm in LA to building a platform that supports women in STEM. Alumna Tani Girton (MBA, ’90), EVP and CFO of Bank of Marin, shared her story of becoming a pioneering force in her sector. The forum included a panel discussion made up of LinkedIn employees and moderated by Nicole Serena Silver, an author, entrepreneur, and Forbes contributor. One of the panel speakers, Megan (O'Meara) Jacobson, Talent Acquisition Manager of LinkedIn’s Global Business Organization, emphasized the personal side of networking where trust and authenticity wins. Another LinkedIn panel speaker, Hope Diwata, Employee Programs Coordinator of the Social Impact Team, shared the importance of curiosity, highlighting the fact that career paths do not have to be linear. The third panelist, Dina To, Director of Legal, shared her story of pushing boundaries through intentional learning and encouraged everyone to use LinkedIn more as it democratizes networking.  

Maya Kraft, a leadership and organizational expert and Dare to Lead™ certified facilitator, led a session that introduced the audience to BRAVING leadership, which includes boundaries, reliability, accountability, vault, integrity, nonjudgmental, and generosity. At the end of the program, Guisselle Nuñez, who was then Associate Vice President of Strategic Marketing at San Francisco State, uplifted the crowd with her interactive workshop on personal branding.

Coming from a wide range of businesses and professions, the 100 attendees had time to network with one another throughout the day.

SF State student Elizaveta Kucherova said, “I can't say enough words of how insightful this conference was. All speakers were sharing their unique stories of success that were incredibly interesting to listen to. Moreover, the networking was great.” Another WELF first-time attendee, Glendy Chan, a former JP Morgan Chase & Co. employee and current SF State MS in Business Analytics program graduate student, posted on her LinkedIn page, “I experienced something truly special at WELF, brilliantly organized by Professor Gulnur Tumbat. There's an undeniable magic when people gather to share their authentic stories, and WELF delivered exactly that.”

View a short video of the event:

Other Activities

We continued to increase our business community interactions by hosting other events. One such event was "Inclusive Marketing in the Age of AI," which we hosted at the SFSU Downtown Campus in collaboration with ANA/AEF, a community organization. The event featured senior executives as speakers and also as attendees. One of the C-level speakers, who is an SFSU MBA alum, became a member of the LFCoB Business Advisory Council after this event. The majority of attendees were industry professionals. The event provided networking opportunities for our students and faculty to interact with corporate attendees. Additionally, we secured access to some AEF resources for our Marketing Department without having to pay for a membership.

We also hosted the Silicon Valley Executive Education Speaker Series at the SFSU Downtown Campus, which was attended by students, faculty, and other external professionals.

To learn more, please visit the Lam-Larsen Community Engagement Initiative website. To explore partnering opportunities, please contact the Initiative Director and Marketing Professor Gulnur Tumbat at gulnur@sfsu.edu.

(Photo: Dec. 5, 2024, group of students, faculty, and staff celebrating Bangladesh Victory Day)

The Lam-Larsen Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Initiative continued to foster a sense of community and connection among faculty, staff, and students across the college. At the heart of these efforts is our dedicated DEIB Lounge (BUS 221), a welcoming space stocked with refreshments—where conversations flourish and connections are made.

Building on the outstanding foundation laid by the previous DEIB Initiative Director, Professor Theresa Hammond, this year brought both continuity and growth. The DEIB Initiative hosted 13 events on campus, blending returning favorites with exciting new programming.

Signature returning events included:

• Black History Month
• Eid al-Fitr Celebration
• Suits, Snacks & Snaps
• Mental Health Awareness Month
• Filipino-American History Month
• Indigenous Heritage Month
• Diwali celebrations
• Bangladesh Victory Day Celebration
• Women Support Women Day

New initiatives added fresh cultural dimensions and energy to the year's programming:

• The Lion Dance: History and Culture
  Organized by SF State alum Gary Ow, this lively event took place outside the newly reconfigured science building. Students, staff, and faculty had the chance to try on traditional lion heads, play the drums, and learn about the rich cultural heritage of the Lion Dance.
• Korea in Focus: Culture, Business, and Innovation
  Spearheaded by Korean faculty members Nara Jeong (Management), Sungha Jang, Kyungin Ryu (Marketing), Brian Yang (Finance), and Lena Yang (Accounting), this standout event drew over 60 students to LIB 221. Highlights included a talk by the Consul General of Korea, student testimonials on studying abroad, traditional Korean cuisine, and interactive segments like K-pop and a playful version of Squid Game. The success of this event sets a strong precedent for future iterations.
• Iranian New Year (Nowruz)
  This celebration spotlighted the cultural and historical significance of the Persian New Year, featuring traditional food, live music, and a beautifully arranged "Seven S's" table, offering a meaningful introduction to Iranian customs.

In addition, this year introduced end-of-semester potlucks, fostering informal bonding and cultural exchange:

• Fall Holiday Party Potluck: Faculty and staff gathered to share delicious food and entertainment and stories.
• Spring “Karaoke Potluck”: Students joined faculty and staff for a lively singing celebration to wrap up the year.

Maxine Lee, Associate Director of the DEIB Initiative and Associate Professor of Economics, worked with data from SF State Institutional Research to construct an alternative method to assess student success in courses offered by LFCoB, specifically focusing on the gaps between under-represented minority students and non-minority students. Lee also initiated study groups for students in Economics and Accounting. It is anticipated that these will be resumed and extended to other subjects in the next academic year. 

Beyond campus, the DEIB Initiative supported student and faculty participation in national conferences:

• Unique McCants attended the Reaching Out MBA (ROMBA) Conference in Los Angeles—the world’s largest gathering of LGBTQ+ business students and alumni.
• Reyna Martinez participated in the Association of Latino Professionals for America (ALPFA) Conference in Las Vegas (August 2024).
• DEIB also supported Professor Theresa Hammond’s travel to a national DEIB conference in Michigan, further strengthening our network and visibility.
• The DEIB Initiative continued to act as a Business School DEI Collaborative Charter Member with the Business School Engagement Collaborative.

This past year has been one of dynamic engagement, cross-cultural learning, and deepening community ties. These activities underscore DEIB’s ongoing commitment to creating an inclusive and welcoming environment for all members of the college. The Initiative continues to serve as a catalyst for learning, celebration, and meaningful connection across our diverse campus community.

If you are interested in partnering with us, please contact DEIB Initiative Director and Hospitality, Tourism and Event Management Professor Colin Johnson at cj7@sfsu.edu.

The Lam-Larsen Emerging Technologies (ET) Initiative's mission is to foster innovation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and leadership in emerging technologies while enhancing the competitiveness of the Lam Family College of Business (LFCoB) and its students. The Initiative was established to bridge the gap between technology and business education and to equip students and faculty with cutting-edge knowledge and skills in emerging areas such as generative AI, blockchain, cloud computing, and more.

The 2024-2025 academic year has been a period of remarkable productivity and growth for the Lam Larsen Initiative for Emerging Technologies. The following summary presents some highlights of our programs and activities for this year.

Workshops and Webinars

This year, we expanded our workshops and webinars with 11 impactful talks in the domain of AI Agents and the Future of Work featuring expert speakers from leading organizations such as Microsoft, Guidewire, Capgemini and Avanade among others. These events offered timely insights into emerging trends in the AI industry and sparked thoughtful dialogue across our campus. 

We also introduced the Faculty Corner Workshop Series, a new platform designed to foster peer learning among faculty in our college. In these sessions, instructors shared how they are integrating AI and other emerging technologies into their courses, offering practical examples and strategies. The series was well-received and is set to continue, fostering ongoing innovation in teaching and curriculum design. 

All sessions were well-attended and contributed to raising the visibility of the Lam Larsen ET Initiative across SF State. Recordings and details for each event are available on our Initiative’s website.

Student Panel on AI in Higher Education 

In partnership with the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CEETL), we organized a student panel on “AI and Higher Education” during the Second Annual AI Campus Symposium. The panel provided students an important platform to discuss critical themes such as AI use and its impact on learning, ethics, academic integrity, and essential policies and guidelines for responsible AI integration. Students thoughtfully addressed future-oriented questions, including their perspectives on the role of AI in their learning experience, their primary concerns and excitements regarding AI's evolving presence in university life, and their suggestions for foundational rules or principles in potential university-wide AI policies. The insights gathered during this event significantly enriched our campus dialogue and provided valuable input for guiding administrative decision-making on AI issues. A full recording of this panel is accessible on our website.

2025 Annual Emerging Technologies Conference: “AI and the Future of Work”

In April 2025, we hosted our inaugural Emerging Technologies Conference in partnership with SAP. Centered on the theme “AI and the Future of Work,” the conference welcomed over 120 participants (exceeding our expectations), including students, faculty, alumni, and industry professionals, for a full day conference at the SAP Labs Campus in San Francisco. 

The program featured a powerful keynote address by Vaibhav Nadgauda (CEO, AppOrchid Inc.; Managing Partner, Moneta Ventures), who shared forward-thinking insights on enterprise AI and its ethical implications. The agenda also included dynamic academic and industry panels, a fireside chat, interactive tech demos, and a lively networking reception. The full conference agenda is available at: cob.sfsu.edu/initiatives-centers/2025-ET-conference.

A highlight of the day was a live demo from two student teams showcasing their generative AI projects developed under the mentorship of Professors Sameer Verma and Leigh Jin and sponsored by the ET Initiative. Their work embodied the initiative’s mission—demonstrating both technical innovation and socially responsible application of AI.

Buoyed by the conference's success, we look forward to making it an annual tradition, deepening our impact at the intersection of academia, industry, and emerging technology.

(Photo:  2025 Emerging Technologies Conference, left photo: panel of speakers; right photo: audience)

SF Hacks 2025

We continued our partnership with SF Hacks, San Francisco State’s internationally recognized annual hackathon. This year’s theme, “Tech for Good,” brought together over 300 students from 33+ universities—spanning from the SF Bay Area to Massachusetts and Singapore. Participants tackled real-world challenges with innovative solutions that combined technical skill, creativity, and social impact, developing projects ranging from hands-free computing to AI-powered wellness tools.

The Lam Larsen Initiative for Emerging Technologies sponsored a special prize for the Best Emerging Tech and AI Solution, alongside support from leading tech organizations, including OpenMind, Perplexity.AI, and Fastly. This year’s winning team, Secure Sense, comprised of talented SFSU students, Khalid Mehtab Khan, Jay Lodha, Shreyas Raghuraman, and Naisarg Halvadiya, developed a GenAI-aware Data Loss Prevention (DLP) tool to detect and block the accidental release of sensitive data. Their project addressed urgent concerns around AI’s use in the workplace and data security.

Our continued support of SF Hack this year led to record participation from the LFCoB, with 33 Information Systems and 23 Business majors taking part. This strong showing reflects the growing interest in emerging technologies among our students and the value of our continued collaboration with SF Hacks in fostering innovation, engagement, and real-world problem solving.

(Photo, left to right:  At 2025 SF Hacks, Secure Sense student team members Jay Lodha, Khalid Mehtab Khan, Naisarg Halvadiya, and Shreyas Raghuraman, who won the Best Emerging Tech and AI Solution Challenge sponsored by the Emerging Technologies Initiative.)

Student and Faculty-Led Supported Projects

We supported four outstanding faculty and student-led projects through our annual Mini-Grants program. These initiatives exemplified our ongoing commitment to fostering innovation and practical skills development within our academic community. Two of the projects were student-centered, including:

• The notable SUGAR Network project led by Professor Leigh Jin and a team of four of our undergraduate students (Nishtha Korde, Priscilla Price, Kanisha Shah, and Quentin Brejoin)
• The Edge Lab, led by Professor Sameer Verma and a team of three graduate students (Marc Johnson, Amogh Ranganathiah, and Lawrence Saenz).

These projects provided students with a platform to enhance their technical expertise in the domain of Gen AI and valuable networking opportunities in broad community with other universities. 

The other two projects focused on curriculum development and course enhancements, with a particular emphasis on integrating advanced AI tools and methods into our Master of Science in Business Administration and in our Marketing courses. A complete list of supported projects, along with detailed descriptions and outcomes, is available on our website.

(Photos:  SFSU students presenting emerging technology projects.)

Visit the Lam-Larsen Emerging Technologies Initiative webpage to learn more. If you’re interested in partnering with us, please contact Niel Shahrasbi, Associate Professor of Information Systems and Lam-Larsen Emerging Technologies Initiative Director, at shahrasbi@sfsu.edu.

The Lam-Larsen Finance and Technology (Fintech) Initiative’s stated mission is to advance education of finance and technology in collaboration with Bay Area industry, academics, and policymakers through excellence in education, engagement and research. The Initiative's main objectives are to provide students with a fundamental understanding of the intersection between finance and technology, increase financial literacy in a technology-driven world, and improve students’ job prospects in the fintech industry. This Initiative offers a variety of programs and activities in the growing fintech field.

The 2024–2025 academic year marked a period of significant achievement and global expansion for the Lam-Larsen Fintech Initiative. We focused on two major accomplishments: organizing the Ripple Fintech Abroad Program to Brazil (August 2025) and co-hosting the April 2025 Fintech Conference at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco with the University of California, Santa Cruz. We also updated the Fintech Fellows program, deepened faculty and industry engagement, and laid the groundwork for a Fall 2025 talk on 'The Future of Finance' in partnership with UC Santa Cruz.

The following is a summary of this year's key activities:

Fintech Conference

“Innovation Meets Regulation” was the theme of our 2025 Fintech Conference held in April at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. The conference was co-hosted with the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and the Center for Analytical Finance (CAFIN) at UC Santa Cruz.

The conference convened leaders from academia, industry, and regulatory agencies to explore the most pressing developments in financial technology. With advancements in tokenization, blockchain, digital payments, and AI, this year’s agenda examined how these innovations are transforming the financial system—and how regulation can evolve to support safe and scalable adoption. This two-day event included thought-provoking panel discussions, academic research presentations, and policy insights from both federal and state regulators.

The event featured a panel discussion on the “Bank-Fintech Partnership Landscape.” The speakers included Phil Goldfeder (CEO, American Fintech Council), Adam Shapiro (Partner, Klaros Group), and Michael Emancipator (SVP and Sr. Regulatory Counsel, ICBA).  It was moderated by Emily Greenwald, SVP, Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas. The speakers discussed new models for collaboration, risk management, and innovation pipelines that connect community banks with agile technology firms.

Another panel discussed “Old Payments, New Rails,” with Stephany Kirkpatrick (CEO, Orum), John Pitts (Head of Industry Relations, Plaid), and Harris Qureshi (Associate Director, Flex) and was moderated by Margaret Riley, SVP, Federal Reserve Financial Services. The group explored how digital wallets, real-time payments, and embedded finance are redefining how consumers and institutions interact with money given their implications for speed, cost, and accessibility.

The topic of “Tokenization in Financial” was tackled by Cuy Sheffield (VP, Crypto, Visa), Scott Bauguess (Head of Regulatory Policy, Coinbase), and Alan Cohn (Partner, Steptoe), with Hampton Finer (Head of Supervision, FRB-NY), moderating the talk. Tokenization is being touted as the future of market infrastructure. This panel evaluated how blockchain-based assets are integrated into traditional finance, with a focus on risk. Interoperatability, and legal frameworks.

Another panel session included Christian Adam (CISO Digital Assets, BNY Mellon), David Mazieres (Professor, Stanford University), and Suresh Shetty (CTO, Kinexys by J.P. Morgan) probed the “Operational Resilience of Distributed Ledger Technology (DLT) Networks,” with Kavita Jain (Associate Director, Federal Reserve Board) moderating. This session assessed the fault tolerance and risk exposure of decentralized systems, particularly DLT. It addressed scalability, downtime recovery, and integration into financial infrastructure.

An academic Panel on “Tokenization, Data Integrity, and Market Behavior” was moderated by Todd Feldman, Professor of Finance and Director of the Fintech Initiative at San Francisco State University. The following original research papers were presented by these faculty:

• "Decentralization through Tokenization,” by Michael Sockin (UT Austin) – Investigates token incentives in decentralized governance.
• "Aggregate Confusion in Crypto Market Data," by Gustavo Schwenkler (Santa Clara University) – Highlights risks from inconsistent crypto pricing and volumes.
• "Beneath the Crypto Currents: The Hidden Effect of Crypto Whales," by Alan Chernoff (College of New Jersey) – Analyzes how large Ethereum holders influence volatility.

(Photo:  Academic Panel of Speakers)

A high-level discussion on how federal and state regulators can support responsible fintech adoption, especially in community banking and consumer services was the focus of a Keynote Fireside Chat with Brandon Milhorn (CEO, CSBS) and Niel Willardson (EVP, FRB San Francisco).

Jon Frost (Head of Innovation, BIS) and Erin English, (FRB-SF) reviewed global approaches to tokenization infrastructure and cross-border interoperability in digital assets.

State regulators, Roberta Hollinshead (Director of Banks, WA DFI), Christina Tetreault (Deputy Commissioner, CA DFPI), and Polly Klyce Pennoyer (Acting ED Superintendent, NY DFS), and moderator Heather Lee (Assistant General Counsel, FRB-SF) discussed their evolving role in overseeing innovation across fintech, crypto, and lending technologies, with a focus on balancing innovation and consumer protection.

Day 2 included a keynote address from Michael S. Barr, Governor on the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) of Governors, and a policy session moderated by Kristin LaPorte, VP of the FRB Chicago.

(Photo:  Michael S. Barr, Governor on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, delivering the keynote address at the 2025 Fintech Conference.)

Fintech Fellows Program

The Fintech Fellowship Program saw more students enrolled compared to last year. In Fall 2024, there were 39 students enrolled in the FIN 420 class compared to only 26 students in Fall 2023.  Ultimately, four Fintech Fellows completed all the necessary steps to earn a Fellows award:

• Fabian Buenrostro
• Alexandra Mardirossian-Quinones – Internship with Project Destined
• Jacob Martin – President of Financial Analysis and Management Education (FAME), a student organization
• Aleksander Peter – Internship at Trade Up

We continued to encourage and support Fintech Fellows students to find internships and jobs. All of them were connected to successful alumni to gain information and skills on how to successfully start a career. Three of them attained career opportunities, with two students obtaining good internships:  Alexandra Mardirossian-Quinones (Project Destined) and Aleksander Peter (Trade Up).

Fintech Abroad Program

The Fintech Abroad program is a one-credit, faculty-led study abroad opportunity organized in partnership with Ripple. The program offers SFSU students immersive exposure to blockchain and digital finance ecosystems in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

The student group traveled to Brazil on August 9–17, 2025, and was led by Professor Todd Feldman.  The program included exclusive visits to Ripple’s offices, meetings with stablecoin issuers, fintech startups, and Brazilian regulatory bodies. Students participated in case studies, industry panels,networking events, and cultural excursions such as visits to Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain. Enrollment in the program was capped at 12 students. Some of the educational highlights included:

• Cross-border payments and blockchain infrastructure
• Stablecoin and digital currency innovation
• Digital payments in emerging markets
• Real-time insights into Brazil's fintech regulatory landscape

Students also gained cultural and leadership development through:

• Exposure to Brazilian culture and global financial perspectives
• Team-based learning, networking, and project presentations
• Visits to historic and cultural landmarks

This program reflects a significant milestone for the Lam-Larsen Fintech Initiative, combining academic learning, global experience, and industry engagement in one transformational opportunity.

Below is a quote from a student who participated in the Fintech Abroad program:

"I had the life-changing privilege to go to Brazil on a Fintech study abroad trip. We visited several companies and institutions in São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro... I learned so much about how both these two beautiful cities are paving the way for massive advancements in the worlds of DeFi, Banking, Payment Processing, and Financial Education for upcoming generations." ~ Kenneth Estrella (B.S. in Business Administration, concentration in Finance)

(Photo (left to right): Todd Feldman (Professor of Finance and Director of Lam-Larsen Fintech Initiative), Kenneth Estrella (BSBA, Finance student) and Luiz Mester (Sales Specialist at Stark Infra) at the Stark Infra office (financial infrastructure company) in São Paulo, Brazil.)

Bloomberg Terminals

In Fall 2024, with guidance from the Fintech Initiative, the LFCoB acquired twelve Bloomberg Terminals, powerful tools that help students bridge the gap between classroom theory and real-world applications. They provide students with access to professional-grade financial data, news, and analytics. Finance students and other students  are now able to utilize these terminals to simulate real-world financial activities, enhancing their educational experience and better preparing them for careers in finance and related fields. 

The Bloomberg Terminals are cutting-edge servers and databases that offer real-time financial information, enabling students to dive deep into global market data, perform advanced research, and engage in comprehensive financial analysis. They not only enhance our students' learning experiences but also give them a competitive edge as they enter the job market. 

The Terminals were funded by the Lam-Larsen Fund for Global Innovation, a generous gift from our esteemed alum Chris Larsen (B.S., '84), his wife Lena Lam, and the Rippleworks Foundation. (See photos at the top of this page of students using the Bloomberg Terminals.)

(Photo: Student using new Bloomberg Terminal.)

Visit the Lam-Larsen Fintech Initiative webpage to learn more. If you’re interested in partnering with us, please contact Todd Feldman, Professor of Finance and Lam-Larsen Fintech Initiative Director, at tfeldman@sfsu.edu.

The overall mission and goals of the Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) Programs Initiative is to find, nurture and maximize the viability of student innovation and entrepreneurship. This year, the I&E Programs Initiative developed new programming and continued to iterate on existing programming with the focus on creating a culture of innovation and building out a resource pipeline for SF State students to not only innovate, but to commercialize their innovations.

The Initiative finished its seventh year of programming, and we are proud of the strides we have made and are excited about our plans for the years to come. This past year was focused on building out a new, 1700 sq. ft. Innovation HUB and MakerSpace, and refining existing programming to better meet the needs of post-COVID era student entrepreneurs. 

Highlights from this year include the IncuGator-mentored concept PotionSlingers winning first place at the seventh annual SFSU Innovation Pitch Competition, and the second Annual Computer Science Pitch Competition winner, AccoAI, taking third place at the CSU-Sunstone Pitch Competition. See more details about our Pitch Competition winners farther below.

We also welcomed School of Design Lecturer Faculty Mark Citola, JD and SF State MBA, to the I&E Programs team. Mark has taken on the director role of all legal programming for the Initiative. Because of Mark’s efforts, starting this year, we have been able to provide in-house legal guidance and resources for our student entrepreneurs.

We also launched our first two micro-entrepreneurship bootcamps, which are designed to help students develop their small business ideas into a revenue-generating operation over the course of a weekend. Our Fall 2023 Bootcamp on eCommerce and eRetailing sold out with 22 participants attending two full days of workshops just before the fall break. Our Spring 2024 Bootcamp on Food & Beverage and Restaurant Entrepreneurship was also fully subscribed and was generously co-hosted by alumna and owner/founder of Cantoo SF, Christina Wu Feng (HTM, ‘18).

Photo:  Innovation Hub and MakerSpace grand opening on February 7, 2024.

The seventh annual 2024 SFSU Innovation Pitch Competition was held virtually on April 12, 2024. The competition winners were:

• First Place:  Potion Slingers - Matteo Fasano (B.A. in Broadcase and Electronic Communication Arts student), Denzill Loe (B.S. in Computer Science student)
• Second Place:  AccoAI - Alex Loughry (B.S. in Computer Science student)

Our LFCoB Pitch Contest was held virtually on March 15, 2024, with the following student teams winning:

• First Place and Voted Fan Favorite:  WagWay – Nishtha Korde (B.S. in Business Administration, Information Systems)
• Second Place:  OPTunity – Yoshitomo Mori (Certificate in International Business) Founder; Hiroki Terada; and Willy Sandi
• Third Place:  Worms Eco Solutions – Hossein Jamshidian (B.S. in Business Administration, Information Systems), Founder

Photos (left to right): 2024 LFCoB Pitch Competition student winners – First Place Winner Nishtha Korde (WagWay); Second Place Winners Yoshitomo Mori, Hiroki Terada, and Willy Sandi (OPTunity); and Third Place Winner Hossein Jamshidian (Worm Eco Solutions).

The Initiative collaborated with the SFSU chapter of the Association for Computer Machinery (ACM) to host the second annual Computer Science Pitch Competition held at the SFSU main campus on March 22, 2024. The following student teams won:

• First Place:  AlignAI - Westly Cho and Natalie Yam 
• Second Place:  FreshLens - Ronald Tieu, Jinwon Choi, Katie Junghyun Song
• Third Place:  AccoAI - Alex Loughry

Left photo:  In the center, holding certificates, are the 2024 Computer Science Pitch Competition First Place Winners Natalie Yam and Westly Cho. Center photo:  In the center, holding certificates, are Second Place Winners Ronald Tieu, Jinwon Choi, and Katie Junghyun Song. Right photo:  In the center, holding a certificate, is Third Place Winner Alex Loughry.

We are now in our third year as the Northern California regional host of the Junior Sciences & Humanities Symposium, a United States Department of Defense-sponsored, national STEM research competition and outreach program. Through the generous support of the national JSHS, we have established outreach partnerships with SF State’s division of Princeton University’s DataJAM project, as well as with the Japanese Community Youth Council's (JCYC) STEM mentoring program. Our goal is to utilize the JSHS network to engage the high school STEM community in an effort to develop a student talent pipeline, and to help establish SF State as a resource for commercializing STEM innovations.

To learn more about other programming not mentioned in this summary, please visit the Lam-Larsen Innovation & Entrepreneurship Programs Initiative webpage. If you are interested in partnering with us, please contact Sybil Yang, Associate Professor and Faculty Director of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, at sybil@sfsu.edu.

The main goal of the Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RI&E) Research Initiative is to support high-impact and rigorous scholarship in the realm of Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RI&E), such that it supports innovation and ethics-oriented elements of San Francisco State University’s mission. This initiative is the first of its kind in a business school in the United States.

Broadly, the Responsible Innovation & Entrepreneurship Research Initiative had two types of activities for 2024-2025: Research and Engagement.  Following are highlights from our extensive research and engagement activities this past year:

Research Activities

The output goal for the RI&E Initiative is to publish “10-15 PRJ articles, in a six-year period, in leading peer-reviewed journals in I&E.” At the halfway point, the Initiative has published seven articles and is on track to double or triple our goal.

Published Research

• Yiwen Chen’s project on “Effectively dealing with the tension between content creation and Monetization" has been accepted and is in the queue to be published at the International Journal of Electronic Commerce. This project had received the Advance to Submission (AtS) RI&E Grant in Spring 2023.
• Jelena Spanjol, Charles H. Noble, Markus Baer, Marcel LAM Bogers, Jonathan Bohlmann, Ricarda B. Bouncken, Ludwig Bstieler, Luigi De Luca, Rosanna Garcia, Gerda Gemser, Dhruv Grewal, Martin Hoegl, Sabine Kuester, Minu Kumar, Ruby Lee, Dominik Mahr, Cheryl Nakata, Andrea Ordanini, Aric Rindfleisch, Victor Seidel, Alina Sorescu, Roberto Verganti, and Martin Wetzels (2024), "Fueling innovation management research: Future directions and five forward-looking paths," Journal of Product Innovation Management, Vol 41 (September), p.893-948. https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.12754
• Kristina Nickel, Ulrich R. Orth, and Minu Kumar (2025), "Consumer response to visual harmony: when is a gender difference, not a gender difference?" Journal of Marketing Communications, 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1080/13527266.2025.2455661

Several peer-reviewed conference papers were also published by the RI&E team.

Ongoing Research

Selected Projects under review at Peer-Reviewed Journals (PRJs):

• Advance to Submission (AtS) grant recipient, Lufei Ruan, has her project currently under review with the Journal of Business Finance and Accounting.
• One project with Minu Kumar as lead author is undergoing review for a fifth time at the Journal of Marketing.
• Another project with Chenwei Li as the lead author is undergoing a second round of revisions for the Journal of Business Ethics.
• Chenwei Li is also a lead author on a project that is undergoing a second round of revisions for the Personality and Individual Differences Journal.
• Minu Kumar and Ian Sinapuelas are also working on a practitioner-oriented paper. To this end, the team is collaborating with Riitta Katila (Stanford University's W.M. Keck Professor and Professor of Management Science and Engineering) and Jen Gennai (formerly the Founder-Director of Google’s Responsible Innovation Department). This author team submitted a proposal entitled “Leveraging Market Dynamics to Reinforce Responsible AI’s Return-on Investment in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises” to the Harvard Business Review and is under review with the editor there.
• AtS grant recipient, Nara Jeong’s project is currently undergoing a first-round revision for the Journal of Social Entrepreneurship.
• Another AtS grant recipient, Priyanka Joshi, has developed two submissions from the grant. One is currently under review in the Journal of Social Psychology.

Selected papers being prepared for resubmission:

• AtS grant recipient, Toni Petkova’s project is currently being prepared for resubmission.
• Ian Sinapuelas and Minu Kumar’s innovation-related paper (that uses the most recent PDMA Best Practices data) is currently being revised with a greater emphasis on dynamic capabilities and portfolio management and is being targeted for submission to the Journal of Business Research.
• Minu Kumar, Janell Townsend and Sungha Jang’s paper on the halo effect of Electric Vehicles is being reworked for the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science.

Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM) Special Issue on Responsible Innovation:

• Minu Kumar, Ian Sinapuelas, and Chenwei Li, in cooperation with Phil Macnaghten (Wageningen University), are co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Product Innovation Management (ABDC A*, AJG 4). The call for papers was released in Fall 2023 and the submission deadline was May 31, 2024. Approximately 20 research papers were submitted and reviewed by JPIM reviewers. The RI&E leadership team independently reviewed submitted papers, assessed reviewer feedback, and provided associate editor comments by September 30, 2024. Of the 16 articles submitted, ten moved to the revise and resubmit stage. We also conducted a paper development workshop during our third annual RI&E Conference for the papers that were invited to resubmit. Revisions were submitted by April 30, 2025, and were out for second round review as of this writing. We plan to publish 8-10 articles through this special issue.

Research-Technology Management (RTM) Special Issue on Responsible Innovation:

• The RI&E Research Initiative's Founder Director, Minu Kumar, is co-editing a special issue on Responsible Innovation in Research-Technology Management (ABDC A Journal) with Nuran Acur (Adam Smith Business School), Jarryd Daymond (University of Sydney), and Carlos Carbajal (Digital Catapult). The issue titled "Responsible Innovation for Emerging Technology: Navigating Ethics, Society, Diplomacy, and Sustainability," is expected to be published in 2027. We plan to publish 8-10 articles through this special issue.

Notable ongoing projects in the pipeline:

• Ian Sinapuelas, Minu Kumar, and Chenwei Li are finalizing a case analysis of Meta’s Responsible Innovation practice. This highly interesting case is targeted to the Case Research Journal that will likely gain a good bit of use in graduate business school teaching. While the article is complete, the RI&E leadership team is currently finalizing an accompanying teaching guide, which is a requirement for submission.

There are several other ongoing research projects in the data collection/data analysis/manuscript development stage, too.

Tools for Research

Database for LFCoB-Wide use:  With support from the LFCoB Dean’s office and the Fintech Initiative, the RI&E Initiative acquired the Refinitiv Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) database for use by SFSU. The intention is to provide ESG data for any interested SFSU researchers.

Responsible Innovation Tools:  In collaboration with two non-SFSU researchers (Gina O’Connor, Professor of Innovation Management, Babson University; Tania Bucic, Professor, University of New South Wales), the RI&E leadership team continued to pursue research regarding Responsible Innovation Tools. In the past year, several key activities were accomplished. First, the project was submitted and approved by three universities’ Institutional Review Boards (SFSU, Babson, University of New South Wales). Second, two surveys were deployed. 

The first survey was deployed in Nov 2024 through Amazon Turk for 100 United States respondents. Using exploratory factor analysis, the Amazon Turk survey revealed that 11 of the 76 survey items were ambiguous and were dropped in the succeeding survey. Using only the remaining 66 items, the second survey was deployed in March 2025 to 194 United States and 193 European respondents through Dynata. The second survey revealed that the initially proposed 12 construct framework was untenable. Moreover, there were significant differences in US vs. European understanding of Responsible Innovation. Thus, the RI&E leadership determined to re-orient the research to further clarify the constructs that surfaced in the previous two surveys, and to explore a third sample consisting of Asian respondents. This is in conjunction with the need to further purify the scale, albeit differently within these groups.

Engagement Activities

The following is a summary of key events organized in the past academic year. These events aimed to foster knowledge sharing, collaboration, and the development of research methods within the LFCoB and the wider scholarly community in the field of Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RI&E).

Third Annual Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference

Our third annual Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RI&E) Conference was held March 14-15, 2025, at the SFSU Downtown Campus, with the theme, "Crafting Responsible Innovation." 

The event offered a rich lineup with three keynote sessions delivered in a fireside chat format, two engaging panels, two research symposium sessions, a JPIM special issue paper development workshop, and several networking opportunities.

The agenda balanced scholarly depth with opportunities for connection and real-world relevance. Over the past three iterations of this conference, it has garnered local, national, and international attention, and we believe it will likely become the go-to “boutique” conference for scholars interested in RI&E research.

The event was comprised of 25 outside speakers and 10 SFSU speakers. About 60 researchers, faculty, and students registered for the event and attended on Day 1, which included a keynote address, panel discussion, fireside chat, and networking session. Day 2 drew 40 attendees for the Research Symposium and JPIM Paper Development Workshop.

We found that what really brings these events to life is the human connection and growth among the speakers, scholars, and especially our students. One moment that really stood out was when we paired one of our keynote speakers with three students (Neil Sterud, Morgan Olivia Wingate, and Austin Jorge Lopacinski) from SFSU’s student SHRM chapter for a panel discussion on responsible leadership. This was more than just a panel—it was a mentoring opportunity in action. Having our students lead a thoughtful, dynamic discussion on stage, alongside a seasoned professional, was a powerful example of what happens when we intentionally bridge academic theory with leadership practice and student development.

Jon Zieger and Minu Kumar’s fireside chat set the tone early with a thoughtful conversation about the challenges of practicing responsible innovation in the Bay Area—where tech optimism often meets real-world complexity. Their insights sparked a lot of good reflection about how we can balance innovation with accountability in such a fast-moving environment.

Q Hamirani and Bahar Javadi followed with another standout session, this time exploring how artificial intelligence is being used in the HR space. Their discussion went beyond hype and really focused on the ethics and practicalities of implementing AI responsibly.

A panel on responsible design, moderated by Neil Goldberg and featuring Mike Montiero (Founder Mule Design), Gitta Salomon (VP of UX Cricut and early Pioneer of UX at Apple), and Suzanne Howard (Formerly Founder-Dean of IDEO University and Partner at IDEO), was another major highlight. They led a lively and, at times, provocative discussion among industrial designers who didn’t always see eye to eye. The differing perspectives made the conversation all the more engaging, reminding us that “responsible design” doesn’t have a single definition—and that healthy disagreement is essential to moving the conversation forward.  

The Research Symposium was packed with fascinating presentations, many the result of collaborative work with scholars from Kiel University (Carsten Schultz and Kristina Nickel) and our SFSU RI&E grant awardees (Lufei Ruan and Nara Jeong). This was particularly exciting because it marked the deepening of an international partnership, and we’re already looking ahead to hosting our fourth annual conference in Kiel, Germany in 2026.

Another session that stood out was the panel discussion with Ruby Lee (Florida State University), Jan Auernhammer (Stanford University d.School), and Neil Goldberg (Praxis Design), who explored responsible design from a more academic lens. The conversation was layered and at times contentious, but in a constructive and well-intentioned way. It pushed boundaries and invited participants to wrestle with tough questions.

Many speakers and attendees shared positive experiences about the conference in their social media posts on LinkedIn.

Photo:

JPIM Special Issue Paper Development Workshop

In alignment with JPIM’s requirements for special issues, the RI&E leadership team hosted a paper development workshop for Responsible Innovation Special Issue authors whose papers qualified for revision. The Paper Development Workshop (PDW) was conducted during the second day of the RI&E Conference and attracted scholars from around the world (Germany, Japan, U.K, Australia, and Denmark). Due to travel restrictions, two author teams were unable to attend in person. A separate online workshop was hosted on March 17, 2025, to accommodate those two author teams. The workshop required authors to specifically address two canvases: contribution canvas and rigor fit. To facilitate the discussion, the RI&E leadership team provided frameworks, deeply engaged with the papers, and provided recommendations to author teams.

All in all, this past year’s conference brought together meaningful ideas, diverse voices, and genuine collaboration. If this past year is any indication, the future of this conference and this community is full of possibility. We will continue our strategic choice of being small scale but creating big impact with our annual conference.

Photo:  

Research Brown Bag Seminar Series

The Research Brown Bag Series serves as a platform for impactful scholars to share their work, provide method training, and engage in stimulating discussions. This series originally aimed to build a research culture among faculty at the Lam Family College of Business and across the CSU system, but we’ve happily seen it expanding far beyond that. 

This year’s Research Brown Bag Series featured four distinguished guest speakers, including Professors Bernd Carsten Stahl, Pinar Ozcan, and Herman Aguinis, and Philip Adu, Ph.D, from top research institutions. Each brought unique perspectives and expertise to our academic community. We saw strong engagement with 432 individuals registering for these events and 203 attending in person. Three of the four speakers permitted us to record their talks, which were later shared on our RI&E YouTube channel. These recorded sessions have collectively garnered 681 views at this writing – a promising indication that our efforts are continuing to resonate beyond the live event format.

One clear highlight from the year was Professor Herman Aguinis’s presentation on how to conduct responsible and impactful research, with the most attendees. In addition, Philip Adu’s and Professor Bernd Stahl’s presentations on AI and research also drew the most attention, not only in attendance but also in post-event video viewership. Its success highlights how timely, relevant topics—especially those related to the latest trends like artificial intelligence—can significantly increase audience interest and engagement.

Featured next is the video recording of University of Nottingham Professor Bernd Carsten Stahl's talk on "Artificial Intelligence for a Better Future":

Here is a snapshot of the four talks hosted this year, including links to the video recordings:

RI&E Research Method Talk – Monday, October 28, 2024:

• Speaker: Professor Bernd Carsten Stahl (University of Nottingham)
• Topic: Artificial intelligence for a better future: An ecosystem perspective on the ethics of AI and emerging digital technologies
• Number of registrants: 121 (23% SFSU faculty/students + 77% outside scholars)
• Number of attendees: 58
• RI&E YouTube channel views: 150 views
• Watch on RI&E YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BuJTU11NsFU

RI&E Research Method Talk – Monday, November 4, 2024:

• Speakers: Professor Pinar Ozcan (Oxford University)
• Topic: Single, comparative and multiple case studies: finding the sweet spot
• Number of registrants: 80
• Number of attendees: 34
• RI&E YouTube channel views: 160 views
• Watch on RI&E YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WI_ELQQu7nU

RI&E Research Method Talk – Monday, February 17, 2025:

• Speaker: Philip Adu, Ph.D. (Center for Research Methods Consulting, LLC) 
  Topic: Leveraging AI and Nvivo for qualitative data analysis
• Number of registrants: 105 (18% SFSU faculty/students + 82% outside scholars)
• Number of attendees: 44
• RI&E YouTube channel views: 392 views
• Watch on RI&E YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viGNzDc0rc0

RI&E Research Domain Talk – Friday, May 9, 2025:

• Speaker: Professor Herman Aguinis (George Washington University)
• Topic: How to conduct responsible and impactful research
• Number of registrants: 126 (12% SFSU faculty/students + 88% outside scholars)
• Number of attendees: 67
• RI&E YouTube channel views: not recorded

(Photos, left to right:  University of Nottingham Professor Bernd Carsten Stahl, Oxford University Professor Pinar Ozcan, Center for Research Methods Consulting Founder Philip Adu, Ph.D., and George Washington University Professor Herman Aguinis)

The decision to upload recordings to YouTube proved to be a valuable strategy in overcoming common scheduling conflicts, particularly for attendees in different time zones. As our data suggests, interest in the series spans continents, with participants joining from Europe, Asia, and across North America. In addition, we observed a growing number of Ph.D. students attending the series and expressing that the content has directly contributed to their research skill development. This underscores the potential long-term impact of our programming on early-career researchers and reinforces the importance of maintaining a global and inclusive outreach strategy.

Through sustained multi-channel promotion, we succeeded in expanding our reach. In fact, registration reports consistently showed that a majority of our attendees come from outside SFSU. This confirms that our virtual format, combined with thoughtful promotion, has allowed us to engage with a much broader scholarly community than would be possible with in-person events alone.

Looking ahead, we aim to diversify the range of topics featured in the series. We welcome suggestions from both faculty and students, and will continue to prioritize content that fosters academic curiosity, methodological rigor, and meaningful dialogue.

This year’s series demonstrated the power of virtual engagement, relevant content, and strategic outreach in building a vibrant academic community. With a few targeted improvements, particularly in SFSU faculty involvement and topic diversity, we’re confident the Research Brown Bag Series will continue to grow as a valued platform for learning, sharing, and connecting across institutions.

Please visit the RI&E Research Initiative website for detailed information about these activities and more. If you are interested in partnering with us, please contact one of the Initiative leaders:

• Minu Kumar, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing and Founder-Director of the Lam-Larsen RI&E Research Initiative.  Email: mkumar@sfsu.edu
• Chenwei Li, Ph.D., Professor of Management and Associate Director of Engagement for the Lam-Larsen RI&E Research Initiative. Email: cwli@sfsu.edu 
• Ian Clark Sinapuelas, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing and Associate Director of Research Programs for the Lam-Larsen RI&E Research Initiative. Email: sinapuel@sfsu.edu

The Lam-Larsen Student Engagement Initiative is designed to help students find and participate in enriching college activities occurring virtually, on campus and in the Bay Area so they may develop to their full potential.

This year, our activities helped create a more engaged peer-to-peer interactive community and build a culture of connection.  

Leadership EDGE

The Leadership EDGE program is a co-curricular engagement program designed to help students find and participate in college activities occurring on campus and virtually. 

This year, we improved our tracking of student participation in co-curricular college events through Leadership EDGE on the Suitable app.  We achieved a significant increase in the number of students participating in events and also in the number of events listed on Suitable. We even brought on a new associate director to start building corporate ties and help increase involvement in our events from the business community.

Our efforts resulted in:

• More than 1,244 students participating in a wide range of events organized by student ambassadors, student organizations, and Career Services.
• Of all LFCoB events held this year, 90% were accounted for on Suitable and were assigned to each competency tracked by the Leadership EDGE program
• 1,407 new students used the Suitable app

Student Ambassador Program

Now in its second year, the Student Ambassador Program continues to grow. Eleven new student ambassadors were added this year (as others graduated), along with a new student organization marketing assistant, who were trained to create, develop, market and promote an engaged peer-to-peer college culture.

To reach more students, the ambassadors and marketing assistant used Instagram, Facebook, X, e-newsletters, posters on student organization bulletin boards, and the Leadership EDGE program on the Suitable app. We also published all new events on our website to help increase student participation at events.

Twenty-two ambassadors took part in trainings and event planning throughout the year to promote Leadership EDGE.  For example, seven student ambassadors and student organization leaders hosted information tables during the Explore SFSU weekend for admitted students. The ambassadors successfully signed up students on Leadership EDGE. They also hosted information tables at other SFSU events each semester, including New Student Orientation events.

(Photos, top row to bottom, left to right:  The 2024-2025 LFCoB Student Ambassadors – 1st row: Alexandra Mardirossian-Quinones, Aloysia Beatrice Charlotte Supit, Ariun-Uchral Naranbaatar, Citlali Madrigal; 2nd row: Duy Tao, Liza Kucherova, Emma Paquette, Ganya Bhatti; 3rd row: Jack Ho, Jorge Aguilar, Julianna Wing, Kenneth Cook McKnight; 4th row: Keziah Zuinghedau, Koa Ahumada, Lais Priedols, Louis Que; 5th row: May Ho, Naiane Bonzanini, Pich Moni Lay, Sanjana Thiyagarajan; 6th row: Stefano Silvia, Yash Bhale)

Business Student Organizations

We conducted two Business Student Organizations Round-Table (SORT) events each semester to determine how to support organization leaders and to encourage them to interact. There were approximately 35-40 participants in these events each semester.

To increase awareness of and participation in student organizations, we launched an annual Business Student Organizations Fair during the Fall 2024 semester, with 13 student organizations joining the event.

College-wide Collaboration

Additionally, the Student Engagement Initiative collaborated with other Lam-Larsen Initiative faculty directors to add their events on the Suitable app and link them to one or more of the four competencies tracked by Leadership EDGE. We also encouraged faculty across the college to remind students to download the Suitable app and sign up for events through Leadership EDGE.

Tracking Engagement through Leadership EDGE (Suitable app)

• Explosive Growth in Student Activity
  • The total number of activities completed by students more than doubled, surging from 3,300 in AY 2023-2024 to 7,313 in AY 2024-2025, a 121.6% increase.
• Dramatically Increased Student Participation
  • The number of students participating in the program (completing at least one activity) grew by 115.2%,from 578 students to 1,244 students. This indicates the program has significantly expanded its reach and impact across the student body.
• Deeper Engagement per Student
  • The average number of activities completed per active student saw an increase from 5.7 to 5.8. While the overall number of users grew, the depth of their engagement slightly increased.
• Substantial Growth in Upper-Division and Graduate Engagement
  • Seniors: Total completions by seniors skyrocketed by 186.6% (from 1,343 to 3,849), and their overall engagement rate increased from 19.9% to 24%. This highlights the program's success in engaging students at a critical point in their academic and professional journey
  • Juniors: Saw a 58.4% increase in total completions
  • Graduate Students: Experienced a 70.2% increase in total completions.

Engagement by Class Standing

Engagement by Competency

Engagement by Experience Tag

Mentorship Program

The Mentorship Program – a career preparation program – provides our business students with valuable one-on-one mentoring from supportive professionals, most of whom are LFCoB alumni. The program continued to grow this year as we partnered with student organizations to raise awareness of the program through more in-person events tracked on Leadership EDGE. 

All mentees were enrolled in Leadership EDGE (on the Suitable app) since the Mentorship Program is fully integrated into it. Their assignments were tracked on the app, which allows them to earn three separate competency “badges" as they complete the three tracks that make up the Mentorship Program:

1. Setting up for Success
2. Professional Engagement
3. Exploring Life and Career Goals

We organized and hosted six in-person social hours, featuring insightful and practical panel discussions with professionals from different industries and varying career paths, as well as three virtual workshops. In Fall 2024, our first social hour drew more than 60 attendees, including 16 mentors and 44 students. The second social hour welcomed about 50 attendees, 7 of whom were mentors and approximately 43 were students. The third event received roughly 50 attendees, with 13 mentors participating. In Spring 2025, attendance at these types of events remained strong: the first social hour drew about 50 participants, while the second and third each brought in around 40. Mentor participation during the Spring semester ranged from 5 to 10 per event. Each virtual workshop attracted approximately 30 participants, and the recorded sessions were shared with all mentors and mentees.

We've received positive feedback and messages of praise and gratitude from many of the professoinals who have served as mentors. Student mentees have expressed how the Mentorship Program has contributed to their personal growth, liked building their confidence, and has helped them improve their interview and networking skills. Some students have shared that the program helped them secure internships.

If you are interested in mentoring a business student or if you are a student interested in being mentored by an industry professional, please visit the Mentorship Program webpage to learn more and apply .

(Photo:  Some of the 2024-2025 Mentorship Program students, alumni, and faculty)

Please visit the Student Engagement Initiative website to learn more about our programs.  If you would like to partner with us, please reach out to Smita Trivedi, Director of the Lam-Larsen Student Engagement Initiative and Associate Professor of Business and Society/Sustainable Business, at strivedi@sfsu.edu.

Lam-Larsen Distinguished Lecture Series – with Lenny Mendonca and Chris Larsen (B.S., '84)

On Tuesday, December 3, 2024, the Lam Family College of Business hosted our second annual Lam-Larsen Distinguished Lecture Series event, which featured an illuminating discussion on "Public Policy and Corporate Strategy in the Age of AI and a Changing World,” with Lenny Mendonca, Senior Partner Emeritus at McKinsey & Company and former Chief Economic Advisor to Governor Gavin Newsom, led by Chris Larsen (B.S., '84), Co-Founder and Executive Chairman of Ripple, Inc. These events provide valuable opportunities for SFSU students to learn directly from captains of industry and accomplished leaders from every sector.

The sold-out event began with opening remarks from LFCoB Dean Eugene Sivadas, Ph.D., followed by an engaging conversation between Mendonca and Larsen about some of the most important challenges of today. Topics included Mendonca’s public policy work with Governor Newsom, innovation in California, government regulations, his views on higher education and economic mobility, the transformative role of AI in the job market and work productivity, and more. Additionally, students had a chance to participate in a Q&A session following Larsen's and Mendonca's conversation. The audience was primarily comprised of SFSU students, alumni, faculty, and staff. The event was held at the SFSU Seven Hills Conference Center in San Francisco.

Watch the event video below or on our college's YouTube channel.

The Lam-Larsen Distinguished Professorship Awards in Teaching, Research and Service are awarded once every two years. Award recipients for the FY 2025-2027 period were announced in May 2025.

Distinguished Teaching Professorship Awards

The Distinguished Teaching Professorship Awards recognize faculty for their long and distinguished record of outstanding, high-impact teaching and mentoring, innovative instruction and significant contributions to improving the curriculum in our college. The four awardees for 2025-2027 are:

• Sally Baack, Ph.D., Management
• Venoo Kakar, Ph.D., Economics
• Eric Lamm, Ph.D., Management
• Julia Miyaoka, Ph.D., Decision Sciences

(Photos, left to right:  Professors Sally Baack, Venoo Kakar, Eric Lamm, and Julia Miyaoka)

2025 San Francisco State University Excellence in Teaching (Lecturer Faculty) Award 

Each year, San Francisco State University seeks to recognize faculty who demonstrate outstanding excellence in teaching (tenured, lecturer), professional achievement, and service. It is the hard work and dedication of these faculty that greatly contributes to SFSU's strategic growth and success.

This year, LFCoB Information Systems Lecturer Faculty Daniel Ciomek, MBA, was honored with the San Francisco State University Excellence in Teaching Award (for Lecturer Faculty).  Mr. Ciomek has been teaching at SFSU since 2012 for large sections of Information Systems for Management. He is an effective instructor who excels at integrating technology and lifelong learning in large hybrid classes.  With a combined 500-600 students enrolled in his classes every semester, he has taught over 12,000 students to date. His teaching effectiveness consistently exceeds the department’s range.  Students often cite his course as one of the most well-organized courses they have experienced. The real-world content, combined with the use of various teaching strategies, effectively engages students in the classroom. Mr. Ciomek envisioned and instituted the official Microsoft Office Specialist certification program on campus, and over 550 students have become certified in Microsoft Excel or Access since 2018. 

Distinguished Research Professorship Awards 

The Distinguished Research Professorship Awards recognize faculty for their research impact, including productivity, publishing, and awards, as well as societal impact, and fostering multi‐disciplinary collaborations within the Lam Family College of Business, across San Francisco State University and broader society through community engagement, research, partnerships, and more. The five awardees for 2025-2027 are:

• Todd Feldman, Ph.D., Finance
• Theresa Hammond, Ph.D., Accounting
• Priyanka Joshi, Ph.D., Management
• Veró Rabelo, Ph.D., Management
• Yi Zhou, Ph.D., Finance

(Photos, left to right:  Professors Todd Feldman, Theresa Hammond, Priyanka Joshi, Veró Rabelo, and Yi Zhou)

Distinguished Service Professorship Awards

The Distinguished Service Professorship Awards recognize faculty for their outstanding and diverse service contributions to our campus community and the general community at large. The three awardees for 2025-2027 are:

• John Logan, Ph.D., Labor and Employment Studies
• Antoaneta Petkova, Ph.D., Management
• Lihua Wang, Ph.D., International Business 

(Photos, left to right:  Professors John Logan, Antoaneta Petkova, and Lihua Wang)

The Career Services & Professional Development (CSPD) team had another impactful year, empowering students to take charge of their professional journeys through personalized advising, innovative tools, and robust industry engagement.

Career Advising

CSPD conducted over 250 one-on-one career advising appointments, helping students refine their resumes, enhance their LinkedIn profiles, and develop strategic approaches to job and internship searches. This year, we also began integrating AI-powered tools into our advising sessions, streamlining the career search process and equipping students with cutting-edge resources. 

Career Preparation Workshops

In collaboration with faculty, CSPD facilitated in-class workshops for over 500 students, focusing on creating marketable LinkedIn content and leveraging AI to strengthen resumes and online profiles. A standout moment was guiding students through prompt iteration using large language models (LLMs) to generate compelling LinkedIn headlines—an essential element for any LinkedIn profile.

Career Exploration, Professional Development and Recruiting Events

Throughout Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, CSPD hosted over 45 events featuring alumni, recruiters, and industry leaders. Highlights included:

• Moss Adams Resume Review: Over 80 students connected with recruiters from tax, audit, and consulting departments.
• Salesforce Alumni Panel: A packed 150-person theater heard firsthand advice from LFCoB alumni.
• LinkedIn HQ Workshop Series: More than 200 students visited LinkedIn’s San Francisco headquarters for a four-part workshop on networking and job searching.
• Our annual professional attire giveaway, "Suits, Snaps, and Snacks," gave over 200 students access to professional attire thanks to the generous support of Withum, BDO, Uber, Grant Thornton, and KPMG.

CSPD organized immersive visits to top Bay Area companies, such as Adobe, Moss Adams, BlackRock, Enterprise Mobility, and the San Francisco Zoo, where over 100 students engaged in professional development sessions on personal finance, business communication, and personal branding. A highlight was a student-led panel featuring Elizaveta Kucherova (B.S. Marketing ’26) and Stefano Silvia (M.B.A. ’25), who shared insights on effective communication and networking as emerging professionals.

We also got a great tour of Visa’s San Francisco headquarters with sweeping views of the Bay area, where students networked with representatives from over 20 departments ranging from risk management, IT, and more!

(Photo: SFSU student-led panel of speakers at BlackRock office visit in Spring 2025)

Career Preparation Tools

With generous support from Enterprise Mobility, CSPD and the university-wide Career & Leadership Development (CLD) Center unveiled the Iris Air Photo Booth—a handsome, self-service station for professional headshots. The Spring semester launch was celebrated with a jovial ribbon-cutting ceremony attended by faculty, staff, and our industry partners from Enterprise.

(Photo: SFSU student using the new Iris Air Photo Booth for professional headshots)

Commercial Real Estate Fellows Program

Managed by the CSPD team, the Commercial Real Estate Fellows Program celebrated its eighth cohort, with 28 students completing a year-long, immersive journey exploring diverse commercial real estate career paths and gaining mentorship from industry professionals. 

(Photo: Commercial Real Estate Fellows Program students and administrators, Spring 2025)

COOP Careers Fellowship Program

CSPD also laid the groundwork for the COOP Careers On-Campus Fellowship, a first-of-its-kind pre-graduation program in partnership with COOP Careers, a seasoned organization that’s helped thousands of recent graduates gain the necessary skills to land roles in the tech and finance industries.

Internship and Job Opportunities

Thanks to their dedication and CSPD’s support, our students and recent alumni secured jobs and internships at leading organizations including:
Bloomberg, Kaiser, TikTok, JLL, Moss Adams, LinkedIn, Enterprise Mobility, Vanta, Culture Pop, PwC, New York Life, Robert Half, Red Bull, EY, UCSF, Pinterest, Health Velocity Capital, BDO, Bandai, and many more.

Please visit the Career Services and Professional Development Center website to learn more about the advising services, career exploration and recruiting events, and skill-building workshops we offer to LFCoB students and alumni. You'll also find links to an array of valuable career resources and job/internship opportunities.

If you are an employer interested in partnering with us on career or professional development opportunities for our students and alumni, please contact Paul Glanting, Director of the CSPD Center at pbg@sfsu.edu.

The Center for Ethical and Sustainable Business’s (CESB) stated mission is to advance business ethics and sustainability in collaboration with Bay Area businesses and their stakeholders through excellence in education, engagement and research. Overall, the CESB focuses on three intersecting issues: Social Justice, Sustainability, and Innovation. At the heart of this intersection lies the possibility of hope, where capitalism is re-imagined, where innovation is inclusive and where ecosystems are regenerative.

Highlights from this year include:

Business Ethics Week (BEW)

Our 19th annual flagship program, Business Ethics Week, was held on April 7-11, 2025, with the following events taking place at the main SFSU campus, the SFSU Downtown Campus, and online:

International Business Ethics Case Competition Case Competition (IBECC)

The IBECC was held on April 9-11, 2025 at the SFSU Downtown Campus. This case competition is an educational event that aims to help all participants become better informed about the necessity, difficulty, costs, and rewards of conducting business ethically.  This case competition asks students to identify and research an ethical issue a company or industry is facing. Typically taking the role of a consulting company speaking to a company’s leaders, the team presents an analysis of the legal, financial, and ethical dimensions of the problem and then proposes a solution that works on all three counts.

Twelve undergraduate and eight graduate teams participated (40 students) from business schools across the U.S., Canada, Mexico and Hong Kong.  Judges, mostly professionals or faculty, participated either in-person or remotely from around the world, including one from SFSU. The CESB sponsored a team of three SFSU graduate students, which included Quentin Leon Jean-Marie Brejoin, Kanisha Bhavik Shah, and Nishtha Sachin.

The participating teams choose their case and topic related to one of the seventeen United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDG). The teams delivered three different presentations during the competition:

• The 25-Minute Competition:  Teams presented their chosen business problem, an analysis of the ethical, sustainable, legal and financial aspects of a problem, and a viable solution on all fronts to a panel of corporate judges. This is followed by a 20-minute Q&A and feedback from the judges.
• The 10-Minute Competition:  Teams incorporated the suggestions from judges during the previous presentation and gave a 10-minute presentation expanding on the ethical dimension of the problem.
• The 90-Second Competition:  Teams gave an elevator pitch explaining the importance of the sustainability component of the problem.

(Top two photos: The audience, case competition judges, and the students who competed in the 2025 IBECC held at the SFSU Downtown Campus)

Guest Talk with Andre  Lecroix, CEO at Intertek Group

On September 17, 2025, the CESB hosted a Guest Talk with André Lacroix, CEO of Intertek Group, who discussed his new book, Leadership With SouI, which reveals his model for business success, built over more than three decades with world-leading organizations such as Ernst & Young, Colgate Palmolive, PepsiCo, Burger King and EuroDisney. Lacroix attributes his success to taking an empathetic, humanist approach to driving sustainable value for all: customers, employees, shareholders, communities and society as a whole. An audience of 43 students, faculty, and staff attended the event, joining in person (18 attendees) and online (25 attendees). 

Net Impact Mixer

The CESB co-sponsored the Net Impact (San Francisco Chapter) Mixer on October 30, 2024. Capitalizing on the annual Social Capital Markets International (SOCAP) 2024 conference held in San Francisco at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Net Impact's San Francisco Professional Chapter held a reception for attendees at our Downtown Campus. SFSU students were invited to attend, giving them an opportunity to network with professionals and each other, while also generating interest in forming a new Net Impact chapter at SFSU. Attendees included 18 professionals and 10 SFSU students.

Please visit the Center for Ethical and Sustainable Business website to learn more about the events and programs we offer. If you are interested in partnering with us, please contact the CESB Director and Management Professor Tom Thomas at tethomas@sfsu.edu.

San Francisco State University Undergraduate Advising Center and LFCoB Advising Team

(Photo: SFSU Undergraduate Advising team)

Professional college advising teams are centralized within the University's Undergraduate Advising Center (UAC) and provide consistent, whole-degree advising support for all students throughout the year.  The LFCoB Advising team provides quality support services to all LFCoB students.

Key Services offered by the LFCoB Advising Team

• Academic Advising: Common services we provide include degree planning, choosing/registering for classes, major exploration, academic success strategies, and policy clarification and appeals. The availability of in-person support was also expanded.  
• Study Abroad: In keeping with the college’s focus on providing students with a global perspective, we encourage students to study abroad for one semester or a full year at one of our 20 partner universities worldwide.
• Graduation Applications: Supporting students with navigating the graduation application process, as well as collaborating with students on creating pathways to graduation when they receive denials.  

Dean’s List

Each semester, the University recognizes undergraduate students who have attained high scholastic achievement. The following criteria are used:

• The student registered for and completed a minimum of 12 semester units for the semester. Only those courses where A-F grades were assigned are counted.
• The student attained a GPA of 3.25 or better for the semester.
• Only resident courses are used in computing the grade point average.
• Only grades for the semester under consideration are used in computing the grade point average.

For the Fall 2024 semester, 1,616 LFCoB undergraduate students made the Dean's List.

For the Spring 2025 semester, 1,258 LFCoB undergraduate students made the Dean's List.

Beta Gamma Sigma

Beta Gamma Sigma (BGS) is the prestigious International Business Honor Society. Since 1913, BGS has recognized and honored top performing students from around the world in business schools accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) International.

Membership to Beta Gamma Sigma is by invitation only. Each September and January, eligible graduate business students and eligible seniors are invited to become members.

Eligibility Criteria

• Advanced master's students with:
  • 3.75 G.P.A. or above
  • 21 credits earned and recorded at San Francisco State University (SFSU)
  • Completed seven 800-level courses
• Advanced senior students with:
  • 3.50 G.P.A. or above
  • At least 105 credits earned and recorded at SFSU
• Advanced-level juniors with:
  • 3.65 G.P.A. or above
  • 75-89 credits earned and recorded at SFSU

LFCoB Qualified Students Invited to join Beta Gamma Sigma:

The following 10 exceptional LFCoB undergraduate students in the graduating class of 2025 were selected by faculty as Honorees for their extraordinary academic achievements and service contributions to the Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University, and their communities. In addition, one of them received special recognition as the Lam Family College of Business Undergraduate Hood Recipient and served as the college’s undergraduate representative at the SFSU Commencement ceremony on May 23, 2025.

• Hood Recipient:  Leah Rose Fillingim-Selk – Labor and Employment Studies
• Qiwen Cai – Marketing 
• Casey Chung – Economics
• Maria McConnell – Management
• Ali Omar – General Business
• Ariana Rios Aguiar – Decision Science
• Kanwarmehtab Singh Waraich – Finance
• Huyen Thanh Nguyen – Hospitality and Tourism Management
• Grace Thwin – International Business
• Grace Thwin – Accounting
• Jamie Lynn Wong – Information Systems

Please visit the 2025 Undergraduate Hood Recipient and Honorees page to read more about these outstanding students.

The following seven outstanding LFCoB graduate students in the graduating class of 2025 were selected by faculty as Honorees for their distinguished academic achievements and service contributions to the Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University, and their communities. In addition, one of them received special recognition as the LFCoB Graduate Hood Recipient and served as the college’s graduate representative at the SFSU Commencement ceremony on May 23, 2025.

• Hood Recipient: Phan Quay Su, Master of Science in Accountancy 
• Raul Alberto Padilla Gonzalez, Master of Science in Business Analytics
• Saathveenaa Mohan, Master of Science in Business Analytics
• Santiago Ricci, Master of Business Administration
• Pooja Singh, Master of Business Administration
• Thanapol Sinjaroen, Master of Science in Business Analytics
• Chin Ting Wong, Master of Science in Quantitative Economics

Please visit the 2025 Graduate Hood Recipient and Honorees page to read more about these amazing students.

Review the list of this year's Faculty Research Accomplishments, which include awards, seminars and publications. Our respected faculty's latest scholarly works cover a wide array of current and leading-edge topics, including: cybersecurity. artificial intelligence, business analytics, wine labels, surveillance at work, counterfeit luxury, investor transaction costs, brand influencers, production, corruption, foreign direct investment, currency exchange rates, firefighter and police trust and service quality, customer revenge behavior, vaccine responsiveness, information technology and retail, aircraft maintenance logistics, empathy and AI, financial statement fraud, and so much more.

The research publications are conveniently presented by academic department and faculty name.

We launched the Faculty Research Podcast Series this year on our LFCoB YouTube channel. The podcasts were hosted and produced by one of our talented students, Juan Martinez (BS in Business Administration, Finance concentration), who has his own successful podcast program. Each podcast video features talented faculty from the Lam Family College of Business and other experts addressing key questions on various business topics. Our faculty share their unique perspectives and scholarship in their academic areas of focus. Through these discussions, we aim to showcase the depth of expertise within our faculty and our dedication to advancing critical thought in modern business and society.

The following topics were discussed by these faculty in this year's podcast interviews:

• Susan Cholette, Ph.D. (Decision Sciences and International Business)

  • Healthcare Supply Chains and COVID-19 - Part 1
  • Healthcare Supply Chains and COVID-19 - Part 2

• Foo Nin Ho, Ph.D. (Marketing)

  • Cross-Cultural and Ethnic Marketing in the U.S.
  • Luxury Marketing and "The Three Phases" Framework

• John Logan, Ph.D. (Labor and Employment Studies)

  • Economic Indicators, American Labor and AI
  • State of American Labor and the AI Disruption Factor

• Ron Purser, Ph.D. (Management)

  • A Brief History of Management Science
  • Corporate Mindfulness
  • The Evolution of Professor Purser's Perspective on Management Science

• Lihua Wang, Ph.D. (International Business)

  • Social Enterprise and the OpenAI Nonprofit Debacle
  • The Role of the CTO and Its Evolution 

• Yi Zhou, Ph.D. (Finance)

  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) in Climate Finance - Part 1
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) in Climate Finance - Part 2
  • Artificial Intelligence (AI) Large Language Models (LLMs) in Climate Finance - Part 3

The Lam Family College of Business congratulates the newly tenured and promoted faculty members (effective Fall 2025 semester)! Please visit their profile pages to learn more about them:

Promotion to Full Professor:

• Sungha Jang (Marketing; also concurrently tenured)
• Chenwei Li (Management)
• Sepideh Modrek (Economics)
• Yi Zhou (Finance)

Tenure and Promotion to Associate Professor:

• Tai-Yin Chi (Information Systems)
• Shuoyuan He (Accounting)
• Wei Huang (Accounting)
• Ebru Ipek (Management)
• Stewart Liu (Decision Sciences)
• Eghbal Rashidi (Decision Sciences)
• Joanne Sopt (Accounting)
• Brian Yang (Finance)

Professor Susan Cholette Awarded Y.F. Chang Endowed Chair

Susan Cholette, Ph.D., Professor of Decision Sciences, was awarded the Y.F. Chang Endowed Chair in Fall 2024 by the Lam Family College of Business (LFCoB) for her exceptional research in international business.

This prestigious award was established in 1998 by Yung-Fa Chang, Ph.D., who founded the Evergreen Group in 1968, a Taiwan-based company that is now the seventh largest shipping company in the world. A self-made billionaire, Chang established the Chang Yung-Fa Foundation with the aim to give away his entire fortune to support education and other causes that bring a positive change to the world. 

Chang donated $1 million in 1998 to San Francisco State University to establish the Y.F. Chang Endowed Chair, which is held for three years and is bestowed upon a professor who demonstrates excellence in research in international business. The recipient's teaching load is reduced by three courses each year to allow them more time to support the advancement of international business studies.

Read the full news article about Professor Cholette's Y.F. Chang Endowed Chair award.

The following is a list of our 100 tenured/tenure-track faculty by academic department for the Fall 2024 semester.  Please click on their names to read their profiles and learn about  their latest intellectual works (note that a few faculty profiles may be temporarily unavailable).

Accounting

Chun-Chia Amy Chang, Ph.D.

Lesley Chen, Ph.D

Min Chen, Ph.D.

Shih-Chu Chou, Ph.D.

George Frankel, Ph.D.

Theresa Hammond, Ph.D.

Shuoyuan He, Ph.D.

Katherine Hetherington, Ph.D.

Su-Jane Hsieh, Ph.D.

Wei Huang, Ph.D. 

Jai Kang, Ph.D

Jung Hoon Kim, Ph.D.

Yao-Tien Lee, Ph.D.

Yifan Li, Ph.D.

Bing Luo, Ph.D.

Lufei Ruan, Ph.D.

Joanne Sopt, Ph.D.

Inae (Lena) Yang, S.J.D.

Decision Sciences

Ramesh Bollapragada, Ph.D.

Susan Cholette, Ph.D.

Stewart Liu, Ph.D.

Julia Miyaoka, Ph.D.

Leyla Ozsen, Ph.D.

Minh Pham, Ph.D.

Eghbal Rashidi, Ph.D.

Theresa Roeder, Ph.D.

Robert Saltzman, Ph.D.

Sada Soorapanth, Ph.D.

Yabing Zhao, Ph.D.

Economics

Dwayne A. Banks, Ph.D.

Michael Bar, Ph.D.

Sudip Chattopadhyay, Ph.D.

Anoshua Chaudhuri, Ph.D.

Kirill Chernomaz, Ph.D.

Chenghao (Matt) Hu, Ph.D.

Zuzana Janko, Ph.D.

Venoo Kakar, Ph.D.

Maxine J. Lee, Ph.D.

Sepideh Modrek, Ph.D.

Lisa Takeyama, Ph.D.

Finance

Todd Feldman, Ph.D.

Snow Xue Han, Ph.D.

George Li, Ph.D.

Ming Li, Ph.D.

Shengle Lin, Ph.D.

Shuming Liu, Ph.D.

Yuli Su, Ph.D.

Brian Yang, Ph.D.

Chris Yost-Bremm, Ph.D.

Yi Zhou, Ph.D.

Hospitality, Tourism and Event Management

Brian Aday, Ph.D.

Mehmet Ergul, Ph.D.

Bo Ferns, Ph.D.

Colin Johnson, Ph.D.

Susan Roe, Ph.D.

Ryan Smith, D.HTM

Sybil Yang, Ph.D.

Information Systems

Paul Beckman, Ph.D.

Tai-Yin Chi, Ph.D.

Guillaume Faddoul, Ph.D.

Leigh Jin, Ph.D.

Nasrin Mohabbati, Ph.D.

Lutfus Sayeed, Ph.D.

Nasser Shahrasbi, Ph.D.

Sameer Verma, Ph.D.

International Business

Bruce Heiman, Ph.D.

Yikuan Lee, Ph.D.

Lihua Wang, Ph.D.

Labor and Employment Studies

John Logan, Ph.D.

Management

Sally Baack, Ph.D.

Robert Bonner, Ph.D.

Geoffrey Desa, Ph.D.

Ian M. Dunham, MBA, Ph.D.

Ebru Ipek, Ph.D.

Bahar Javadi, Ph.D.

Nara Jeong, Ph.D.

Priyanka Joshi, Ph.D.

Denise Kleinrichert, Ph.D.

Eric Lamm, Ph.D.

Chenwei Li, Ph.D.

Arrow Minster, Ph.D.

Antoaneta Petkova, Ph.D.

Ronald Purser, Ph.D.

Veró Rabelo, Ph.D.

Tom Thomas, Ph.D.

Smita Trivedi, Ph.D.

Marketing

Subodh Bhat, Ph.D.

Yiwen Chen, Ph.D.

Foo-Nin Ho, Ph.D.

Nga Ho-Dac, Ph.D.

Mahmood Hussain, Ph.D.

Sungha Jang, Ph.D.

Minu Kumar, Ph.D.

Veronika Papyrina, Ph.D.

Kyungin Ryu, Ph.D.

Sanjit Sengupta, Ph.D.

Ian Clark Sinapuelas, Ph.D.

Judi Strebel, Ph.D.

Gulnur Tumbat, Ph.D.

Deanna Hui-Ming Wang, Ph.D.

The Business Advisory Council supports the dean and the Lam Family College of Business in fundraising, business and corporate engagement opportunities, and general promotion in support of the mission of the college.

Specifically, the council enables effective partnerships between the business community and the college in integrating business education with real-world innovations, developing a pipeline for student careers and faculty research, and developing sources of investment in support of the goals of the college.

Our Council members reflect the diversity of our college, SF State, the Bay Area, and the State of California. They represent an array of industries, including accounting, banking and finance, investment, consulting, hospitality, telecom, entrepreneurship, publishing, government, technology, healthcare, academia, insurance, and agriculture.

This year, we were truly honored to add six new council members (in alphabetical order):

• Anjali Arora, Managing Director, Techne Infiniti Ventures
• Nick Fairbairn (B.A., '03), VP of Growth, Chime
• Carlos R. Flores (B.S., '98), Principal, Humantag Development
• Mary Huss, Chair, Emerita president and publisher, Silicon Valley Business Journal and San Francisco Business Times
• Nicole M. Mossman (B.S.; MBA), former Chief Marketing Officer, AssetMark
• KD Singh, Senior Vice President, EXL Service

Learn more about the members of our Dean’s Business Advisory Council.

The Lam Family College of Business offered 37 scholarship opportunities (some offer multiple awards) this past year to support our students’ educational goals. Funding for these scholarships was provided by generous donors and organizations who believe in higher education and our students’ ability to achieve academic success.

Scholarship Funds Distributed:  $203,025

Scholarships Awarded:  103

The list below reflects student scholarship opportunities offered between July 1, 2024 and June 30, 2025:

Your Support Makes a Significant Difference to Today's Students, Faculty and Programs

The Lam Family College of Business is San Francisco’s public business school, embracing the area’s rich diversity.  The college relies on private support to fulfill its mission and provide a high-quality education to students from the Bay Area and beyond. Many of our students are the first in their families to pursue a university degree, and their ambition and success add economic, cultural and social vitality to our community. A scholarship can mean the difference between graduating on time or never graduating at all, and you can make that happen. You can also help us continue to offer innovative and effective academic programs, and attract and retain stellar faculty. 

Ways to Give

• Make your gift online at:  https://develop.sfsu.edu/college-business
• Donate stock and securities
• Leave a legacy by naming the Lam Family College of Business in your will or living trust

For more information on giving to the Lam Family College of Business, please contact: 

• Sukhie Bal, Senior Director of Development. Email: sukhie@sfsu.edu 

We are proud to share that two of our college's alumni – Stephen Gillett (MBA, '07), chairman and chief executive officer at Verily, an Alphabet health technology company, and Evan Kidera, (B.A., '04; MBA, '14), co-founder and CEO of Señor Sisig, a trailblazing Filipino-fusion restaurant – were inducted into the San Francisco State University Alumni Hall of Fame during the Fall 2024 semester. 

For 30 years, SFSU has recognized notable alumni for their contributions to their communities. SF State President Lynn Mahoney and the University community honored the four newest inductees at a celebration and dinner on November 1st at The Ritz-Carlton, San Francisco. President Mahoney said, “SF State prepares students to be successful global citizens focused on problem-solving with a lens toward equity, All our Hall of Fame alumni share a desire to leave an enduring mark through their work and in their communities. These four inductees exemplify this, and it is a pleasure to welcome them to the Hall of Fame.”

The two other inductees are Genny Lim (B.A., '77; M.A., '88), an award-winning playwright, poet, performer, educator and community leader, and Patrick Makuakāne (B.A., '89), who received a MacArthur “genius” grant in 2023 for his groundbreaking work as a cultural preservationist; he founded and continues to oversee the cultural organization Nā Lei Hulu I Ka Wēkiu, which features a traditional dance company.

(Photos, left to right:  Genny Lim (B.A., '77; M.A., '88), Stephen Gillet (MBA, ’07),  Evan Kidera (BA, ’04; MBA, ’14), and Patrick Makuakane (B.A., '89) were recognized for their outstanding accomplishments and impactful contributions to their communities by being inducted into the San Francisco State Alumni Hall of Fame in November 2024.)

Read more about Stephen Gillett and Evan Kidera:

Stephen Gillett (MBA, ’07)

Stephen Gillett is the chairman and chief executive officer at Verily, an Alphabet health technology company focused on research, care and public health to deliver on the promise of precision health and help people live healthier lives. He leads teams that create tools to accelerate data and evidence generation, products to enable more personalized care and science-based approaches to manage disease at a population level. 

Gillett is a highly recognized and sourced tech executive and thought leader who has 15 years of C-suite experience at some of the nation’s biggest brands, including Alphabet’s Chronicle, Symantec, Best Buy and Starbucks.  

Gillett’s achievements span industries and disciplines. He has been featured in Fortune’s “40 under 40” list, included in CNNMoney’s “Executive Dream Team” and selected as a Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute. His influence in the health-care industry is underscored by his inclusion in The 2022 Healthcare Technology Report’s “Top 25 Healthcare Technology COOs” and his nomination to Modern Healthcare’s 2023 “100 Most Influential People in Healthcare” list. His ingenuity extends beyond the corporate world: He was recognized by WIRED magazine as an innovative “Guild Master in World of Warcraft.” 

A devoted family man of Lebanese descent, he married his high school sweetheart, and together they have eight children living in Dallas. He is a board member for Discord, Dutch Bros and Granular Insurance. Amazon named him a bestselling author for his 2019 memoir “From Simi Valley to Silicon Valley.”

Evan Kidera (BA, ’04; MBA, ’14)

San Francisco native Evan Kidera is the co-founder and CEO of Señor Sisig, a trailblazing Filipino-fusion restaurant. Raised in a culinary environment, with his late father being a sushi chef, Kidera was no stranger to kitchens across San Francisco. However, by college, he discovered his true passion was business. Determined to marry his entrepreneurial drive with his roots, he chose to channel his expertise into an industry that felt like home —food. 

In 2010, inspired by the street food movement, Kidera partnered with childhood friend Gil Payumo to launch their first food truck. While earning his MBA at SF State, Kidera applied his business acumen to grow Señor Sisig from a single truck into a celebrated name in the Bay Area’s culinary scene. Fourteen years later, Señor Sisig boasts a fleet of food trucks and three brick-and-mortar restaurants in iconic locations, including the Mission District, San Francisco Ferry Building and Oakland. A fourth restaurant is set to open at Chase Center in 2025. 

Under Kidera’s leadership, Señor Sisig has gained national recognition, appearing in major publications and on the Food Network’s “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” The brand has played a key role in bringing Filipino flavors to a wider audience, popularizing it across the Bay Area and beyond. 

Kidera’s commitment to the community is equally strong. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Señor Sisig provided meals to frontline health care workers and communities in need. He maintains close ties with SF State, regularly speaking to business students and sharing insights on entrepreneurship. Above all, Kidera values his family, considering them his greatest achievement and source of joy. 

Get Involved with the Lam Family College of Business 

There are numerous ways in which our valued alumni can re-engage with and support the Lam Family College of Business and our students. 

For example, if an alum has a limited amount of time available, they may wish to visit our campus and give a talk at one of our classes, be a guest speaker at one of the many programs, conferences or events happening throughout the year, or lead a skill-building workshop for our students.

Perhaps other alumni would prefer to serve as a judge at one of our student pitch competitions. 

There's even the option to host a group of students at a company site to tour the facilities and talk about potential career paths or job opportunities, planned through our Career Services and Professional Development Center.

For any alumni who are ready to invest a bit more time in shaping our students' and our college's futures, participating in our Mentorship Program as a mentor or serving on one of our advisory boards are highly rewarding options.

Don't hesitate to send us an email at cobus@sfsu.edu if you're interested in playing a worthwhile role with any of the enriching and transformative programs and activities we offer.