Kristen Walker Appointed at Nazarian College
Nazarian College Dean Dr. Chandra Subramaniam recently appointed Dr. Kristen Walker, Professor of Marketing, in the role of Interim MBA/GCBA Director for Nazarian College. The Dean welcomes her to the position, noting that Dr. Walker “is well recognized within her discipline for her academic success both through her publications, and presentations in academic conferences and as a speaker on privacy to the state and national governmental agencies.”
Dr. Walker plans to use her extensive experience to highlight the coalescence with the innovative research interests of Nazarian faculty and the evolving needs for graduate business students. While taking on a new role during a pandemic is challenging, Dr. Walker says that she will “continue to seek opportunities for research, teaching, and service to benefit students’ educational experience and success – promoting the university’s mission, values, and vision in the surrounding communities and nation.”
Dr. Walker views the Nazarian MBA program as not just education offered “to” students, but an educational experience “with” students. Students’ experience and point-of-view offer unique insight along with faculty members’ expertise, leading to a quality educational experience. Along with the MBA/GCBA staff, Dr. Walker aims to support this philosophy of “added value with relevance” and help students succeed.
This relevance is key for guiding Nazarian MBA students in their culminating experience – the MBA Consulting Project. Dr. Walker has experience managing numerous client projects – partnering with many SFV and LA County businesses such as, CASA LA (Court Appointed Special Advocates), 88.5 FM SoCal, Facebook Custom Audiences, Fox Sports University (UFC/Fox Deportes, Golden Boy Boxing/Fox Deportes, UEFA Champions League/Fox Deportes, Fox Sports 1), and consulting with Buzzine, a multi-platform content network. As the marketing faculty mentor at META+Lab, she helped students manage/execute marketing events/activities for client projects and platform development, such as Cal State Pays. She is also the Principal Investigator for an NSF grant on EdTech, addressing the unexpectedly topical intersection of tech companies and educational experiences, data collection, and privacy.
As a proud CSUN alumnus, Dr. Kristen Walker earned her doctorate at UCLA, then began her tenure at CSUN as a marketing professor, becoming a full professor in 2017. Her research interests merge public policy, technology and marketing to include interactive marketing, social media, retail environments, brand preference, Big Data, Internet privacy, information quality, and youth privacy protection. Increasing interactions using technology and a growing consumer reliance on the convenience of technology have led Dr. Walker to focus on social responsibility issues facing the tech industry (i.e. MarTech) and more specifically, consumer privacy challenges. She hopes to be able to highlight the pertinent costs/benefits involving technology in the MBA coursework and the overall program experience.
About the Author
Ryan Nemetz
Ryan is the Director of Client Services at MetroMBA and Clear Admit. He has over six years of experience in higher education including his current role and serving as a college basketball coach at Eastern University for four years.
