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.
UCLA Anderson Professor Andres Terech Talks Halo Top Success In LA Times
Halo Top, the healthier alternative to standard ice cream, has ousted Ben & Jerry’s and Haagen-Dazs, and is now the number one selling ice cream pint in grocery stores. In an interview with the LA Times from Ronald White, UCLA Anderson School of Management professor Andres Terech spoke on whether Halo Top’s model is sustainable.
Halo Top’s founder, Justin Woolverton, another UCLA graduate, perfected the ice cream recipe in his kitchen with a $20 ice cream maker. Woolverton was working as a lawyer at Latham & Watkins when he started experimenting in the kitchen to create an ice cream that would fit into his diet. After establishing Halo Top, Woolverton got the product into Whole Foods and a few other chains via cold-calling.
“It took me a year to figure out how to really make ice cream. I had a good $150,000 in credit cards just to rack up. I mean, it was headfirst. It was a risk,” Woolverton said.
Woolverton’s team does not work in traditional offices, but rather a co-working space in the Fairfax District of LA. The team members generally do the bulk of their work from home. They alternate between getting together at the co-working space and communicating electronically. According to Cal State Northridge Professor and Interim Dean, Deborah Cours, the team’s technique is to outsource production and distribution so that they can focus solely on brand strategy. In this way, Halo Top’s success is widely considered a testament to building a strong brand.
Halo Top has also been in the news lately because of its completely bizarre Kubrick-esque commercial, which is both the year’s most frightening ad as well as its best.
Terech received his Ph.D. in marketing from Anderson in 2004. His work on branding, pricing, and retail has appeared in publications like Case Research Journal and Harvard Business Review.
