Top row: John Handel, Craig Honick, A. Reeves Johnson. Bottom row: Adam Kerpelman, Sarah Memmi, David Schuff
As students, staff, and faculty prepare to begin a new academic year, the fall 2023 semester launches with a renewed energy, thanks to a fresh group of professors, lecturers, and a researcher who have joined the Commerce School faculty this August.
These experts in their various fields have come to and across Grounds on the strength of their impactful work and insightful research. Their expertise and care will surely prove instrumental in driving McIntire’s academic excellence in its undergraduate and graduate programs and enhancing an unmatched student learning experience. As the Commerce School continues to elevate and refine its leading business education, these new members of the McIntire community are undertaking critical research and preparing students to use commerce for the common good in a multitude of areas.
John Handel, Postdoctoral Research Associate, Finance Area
Having completed his Ph.D. in Economic History at the University of California, Berkeley in August 2021, John Handel comes to McIntire from UVA’s College of Arts & Sciences as a Postdoctoral Research Associate. An economic and financial historian, he has served in a similar role at the College, where he taught interdisciplinary courses on finance, data science, and history, including Financial Lives, which introduced students to the study of finance, and Numerical Values, which introduced students to data science. His research is broadly concerned with understanding how the operations of the financial system impact the broader social world. Handel is the author of two book projects, The Infrastructures of Finance and The British Financialization of American Slavery.
Craig Honick, Lecturer of Commerce, IT & Innovation Area
An applied ethnographer, Craig Honick is the Founder of social research and advisory firm The Good People Research Company, which focuses on internal, narrative-based drivers of consumer behavior. He is also a Research Director with The Futurum Group, where he supports a team of analysts that identifies and advises on emerging, global trends for Fortune 100 technology companies. Clients include Microsoft, SAP, Salesforce, Cisco, Dell, Qualcomm, and Honeywell. A career entrepreneur and startup adviser, Honick has served as Chair of the Charlottesville Business Innovation Council and as a mentor for both the UVA Batten Institute’s iLab and Techstars’ Startup Weekend. He is also the Lead Consultant on a 2023-2024 project to develop a new “regional entrepreneurship investment strategy” for the 10 counties that comprise GO Virginia Region 9, one of nine Virginia regional economic development organizations that collaborate to stimulate business and job creation across the Commonwealth.
A. Reeves Johnson, Assistant Professor of Commerce, Marketing Area
A. Reeves Johnson received his Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Economics and Mathematics from the University of Missouri-Kansas City. Prior to joining McIntire, Johnson taught courses in economics, statistics and data analytics at Maryville College in Tennessee and at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business. Johnson’s current research explores the dynamics of firm- and industry-level investment behavior and financial strategy. His methodological interests include multilevel modeling and Bayesian methods. His research has appeared in Journal of Post Keynesian Economics; The European Journal of the History of Economic Thought; and the Handbook of Research Methods and Applications in Heterodox Economics.
Adam Kerpelman, Lecturer of Commerce, IT & Innovation Area
Adam Kerpelman has been an entrepreneur, a technologist, and a marketing leader for almost 20 years. He has founded, run, or led marketing for companies in digital marketing, content creation, telehealth, legal-tech, and big data. He was an early explorer of the capacity for data-driven marketing strategy enabled by modern digital platforms and coined the phrase “marketing engineer” for the operatives focused on the practice. Kerpelman created the world’s first “transmedia” web series, was an early player in streaming video, has racked up tens of millions of views for clients and companies, and won a few hackathons and pitch competitions. In his research, he focuses on marketing, mass media, decentralized governance and collaboration, artificial intelligence, and intellectual property. He is currently a Research Fellow at The AI Responsibility Lab, where he is working on the impact of AI in mass media and the potential impact of AI misinformation in politics.
Sarah Memmi, Assistant Professor of Commerce, Marketing Area
Sarah Memmi teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in marketing and brand management. She was previously an Assistant Professor of Marketing at the University of Louisville College of Business, where she taught Principles of Marketing, Equine Marketing, and Public Relations at various levels. She earned her Ph.D., Business Administration–Marketing, at Duke University’s Fuqua School of Business. Prior to her academic career, Memmi held a professional leadership role in marketing communications. Her research, which has appeared in Journal of Consumer Research and Emotion, focuses on the psychology of consumer behavior and the relationships between goal pursuit and personal resources (e.g., time, money, energy). Her work seeks to answer questions such as: How do consumers anticipate and respond to conflict between multiple goals that compete for their resources? How do available resources influence goals? How can consumers manage limited resources to balance multiple goals? Memmi is also interested in consumption habits and well-being.
David Schuff, Professor of Commerce, IT & Innovation Area
David Schuff joins McIntire as Professor, General Faculty from his last position at Temple University. His teaching interests include digital transformation, process design and improvement, data analytics and visualization, and cloud-native application design. His research interests include the impact of user-generated content on organizations and society; the application of information visualization to decision support; and self-service business intelligence. He has published more than 60 refereed journal articles, book chapters, and conference proceedings. Schuff’s work has appeared in MIS Quarterly; Decision Sciences; Decision Support Systems; Information & Management; Communications of the ACM; IEEE Computer; and Information Systems Journal.
