Faculty

Lydian Altman

Albert and Gladys Hall Coates Distinguished Term Teaching Assistant Professor, Center for Public Leadership and Governance

UNC School of Government

Lydian Altman works with and across various public sector organizations to diagnose, design, develop, and deliver leadership programs and services for public officials through the UNC School of Government Center for Public Leadership and Governance.

Since she joined the School in 1999, her work has included consulting with elected and appointed leaders to create strategic plans, teaching leadership topics, and facilitating retreats for governmental and nonprofit organizations and cross-sector community groups to help them plan and work together to solve public problems.

Many of her project-generated articles have been published in ICMA’s IQ Report and PM Magazine, the American Review of Public Administration, Popular Government, and PA Times. Altman holds a BS in industrial relations and an MPA from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Since she joined the School in 1999, her work has included consulting with elected and appointed leaders to create strategic plans, teaching leadership topics, and facilitating retreats for governmental and nonprofit organizations and cross-sector community groups to help them plan and work together to solve public problems. Many of her project-generated articles have been published in ICMA’s IQ Report and PM Magazine, the American Review of Public Administration, Popular Government, and PA Times.

Altman holds a BS in industrial relations and an MPA from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Doug Bean

Director of Government Services, Raftelis

Doug has worked for, and with local governments for the past 44 years.

He served as the City Manager in the cities of Morganton, NC and Asheville, NC and as Executive Director of a regional utility – Charlotte Mecklenburg Utilities. Following his career in public service, Doug has for the past 9 years been the Director of Government Services for Raftelis. In his consulting role he has continued his work with local governments by providing services around strategic planning, organizational assessments, process improvement, board training, and governance analysis for cities, counties, and special districts across the country. Doug is a Credentialed Local Government Manager with ICMA, teaches in the MPA program at UNC Charlotte, and lectures and conducts workshops at the School of Government at UNC Chapel Hill. Doug earned a bachelor’s degree in history from Lenoir Rhyne University, a master’s degree from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and was honored to be the commencement speaker for the MPA program at his Alma Mater – UNC Chapel Hill.

Sreedhari Desai, PhD

Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior and Crist W. Blackwell Scholar

UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

Dr. Desai teaches the Leading Change: Experience Change Simulation as part of The Water & Wastewater Leadership Center’s curriculum. While this is her first year joining the Leadership Center, Dr. Desai has been teaching with UNC Executive Development since 2012.

Sreedhari Desai is an Associate Professor at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School. Previously, she was a research fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics (Harvard University) and at the Women and Public Policy program (Harvard Kennedy School). She obtained her PhD in organizational behavior at the David Eccles School of Business at the University of Utah. She did her undergraduate studies at the Punjab Engineering College in the field of metallurgical engineering and has an MS degree in finance from the University of Utah. Her research investigates how individuals behave in organizations, with a focus on ethical decision-making, fairness and gender diversity. Her work can be broadly defined as “business and society” with a focus on decision-making in an organizational and individual behavioral context. Her work broadens and deepens the exploration of how, why, when and where social inequality, organizations, and institutions interact. Her work can be broadly defined as “business and society” with a focus on decision-making in an organizational and individual behavioral context. Her work broadens and deepens the exploration of how, why, when and where social inequality, organizations, and institutions. At UNC Executive Development, Sreedhari is a faculty member for the Department of Veteran’s Affairs Senior Executive Strategic Leadership Program, IBM India Leadership Program, 2U Operations Senior Leadership Program, ExxonMobil, SunBelt Leadership program, the CommScope Emerging Leader Program, and the Women in Business Program.interact. Sreedhari’s work has been published in academic outlets such as the Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Administrative Science Quarterly, and received extensive media coverage from journals such as the Harvard Business Review, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, The Boston Globe, NineMSN, The Irish Times, The Financial Times, The Toronto Star, The Indian Express, The Motley Fool, The Huffington Post, The Economic Times, The Nation, The Christian Science Monitor, and Outlook Business, to name a few.

Elizabeth Dickinson, PhD

Adjunct Professor, UNC Executive Development, Former Associate Dean of Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI), and Independent Consultant in DEI & Inclusive Leadership

Dr. Elizabeth Dickinson is a consultant, advisor, and educator who specializes in Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI); Inclusive Leadership; and cross-cultural communication. She has spent the past ten years as a Faculty Member at the UNC Chapel Hill Kenan-Flagler Business School. While there, she also served as UNC Kenan-Flagler’s inaugural Associate Dean of DEI.

Dr. Dickinson wants to re-write the book on how we think about and do DEI, to open connection and start difficult discussions about and across difference. From an interdisciplinary approach – and using her academic background and applied experience – her consulting, advising, and teaching focus on the emerging concept of “Inclusive Leadership” – a personal strategy for individuals within organizations to create change. Dr. Dickinson has experience in corporate, nonprofit, governmental, and academic environments, and she has international experience working and living in Japan, China, and the Netherlands. She has worked with clients, leaders, employees, students, and academics in many organizations and universities across the United States. Numerous academic outlets have published her award-winning research. She also has won teaching and mentoring awards. In 2020, she received one of UNC’s highest teaching awards – the Chapman Family Teaching Award for excellence in teaching. Dr. Dickinson received her PhD from the University of New Mexico, her MA from New Mexico State University, and her BA from California State University San Bernardino.

Jennifer Giordano, M.A., Ed.M., ACC

Affiliate Faculty, UNC Executive Development

Jennifer Giordano has over a decade of coaching and facilitation experience. She worked internally at Fortune 500 companies and then launched her own coaching and training practice in 2009.

Ms. Giordano works with leaders at all level and industries helping them realize their full potential and assisting them to put a plan in place to reach their objectives. Her professional background, coupled with her double master’s degree in counseling and organizational psychology from Columbia University, and her undergraduate degree in human & organizational development from Vanderbilt University, has given her deep skills in the area of executive and team development. Giordano has been an executive coach, trainer, and facilitator for leading companies such as Morgan Stanley, J.P. Morgan Chase, and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). At PwC, she worked internally in their advisory line of service, within their Human Capital group, assisting clients in the pharmaceutical, technology, utilities, and finance industries. She assisted companies during organizational change by assessing the impact of change on the employees and working with leaders to ensure they are communicating the benefits and building buy-in for change. She then built training programs to align employee skills with the new organizational structure, policies, or processes. Giordano loves working with individuals and groups at any stage in their career helping them to become clear on their own values, skills, and goals, while aligning these with the needs of the people they lead. Giordano’s experience includes training and facilitation of groups ranging from 4-300 participants, executive coaching of millennials through the C-Suite, curriculum, program, and course design and development. She has worked with intact teams, as well as leaders from specific industries yet differing organizations. She teaches on various training facilitation topics such as leadership development, professional skills development, and the future of the workplace.

Mabel M. Miguel, PhD

Clinical Professor of Organizational Behavior

UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

Dr. Miguel teaches Setting Priorities & Empowering Employees; Leading Teams; Foundations of Leadership; Power, Politics & Influence; and Motivation & Performance Management as part of The Water & Wastewater Leadership Center’s curriculum and has served its faculty since its founding in 2001.

She teaches core leadership and management skills to MBA, Executive MBA, MCA@UNC, and global OneMBA® students. She has developed and taught leadership skills courses for organizations in the United States, South America, Asia, and Europe. Corporate clients have included Altria, BAE Systems, Bank of America, BD (Becton Dickinson and Company), Caterpillar, CEMEX, Cisco, CommScope, DH&R, Duke Energy, Eastman Chemical, ExxonMobil, FedEx, Ferguson Enterprises, Glen Raven Mills, Grant Thornton, Grundfos, J. M. Huber Corporation. Kaba Group, Marathon Petroleum, Performance Foods, PRA International, Reynolds American, Schneider Electric, Siemens, Sony Ericsson, Southern Wine & Spirits, TE Connectivity, Teleflex Medical, Textron, TIAA-CREF, Time Warner Cable, and Volvo Trucks. Government clients include the Department of Defense, Environmental Protection Agency, JFK Special Warfare Center, Department of Defense /Office of the Secretary of Defense, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, and U.S. Air Force, Army, and Navy.  Professor Miguel has also taught extensively in open-enrolment executive programs. A citizen of the world, Dr. Miguel is uniquely qualified to lead UNC Kenan-Flagler students on Global Immersion Electives to South America and Asia. Born in Argentina, she has lived in Venezuela, Barbados, France, and Turkey, where she was a visiting professor at Koç University in Istanbul. She speaks Spanish and English fluently, conversational French and survival Turkish. Previously, she was an associate at the Management Simulation Projects Institute at New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business, and a senior designer and trainer for Business Simulations, Inc., a New York consulting firm. At NYU, she trained and co-designed several behavioral and computer simulations. Clients included Koç University, Stern’s Executive MBA Program, ESADE (Escuela Superior the Administración y Dirección de Empresas) in Barcelona, Glaxo, Inc, The American Banking Institute, The National Council for Savings Institutions, The Center for Creative Leadership, Citibank, and Dow Jones. She received her PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill and her MBA and BS from NYU’s Stern School.

Atul Nerkar, PhD

Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship and Allred Distinguished Scholar

UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School

Atul Nerkar is the Jeffrey A. Allred Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. He also served as the Associate Dean of Executive MBA Programs and as Coordinator of the PhD program in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Kenan-Flagler.

Atul Nerkar is the Jeffrey A. Allred Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. Atul’s research and teaching interests are in the area of strategy with specific emphasis on technology, innovation, and entrepreneurship. He examines these issues in a variety of sectors that include manufacturing electronics, chemicals, biotechnology, and pharmaceuticals. Atul is a thought leader in his field having and sits on the editorial boards of top tier journals such as the Strategic Management Journal. He was also a Departmental Editor at the IEEE-Transactions in Engineering Management. His research has won awards such as the McKinsey Best Conference Paper award at the Strategic Management Society Meetings. Prior to joining the Kenan-Flagler Business School, Atul was on the faculty at Columbia Business School and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His academic qualifications include an undergraduate degree in Production Engineering from the University of Bombay, India and a graduate degree in International Business from the Indian Institute of Foreign Trade, New Delhi, India. Subsequently Atul worked with Unilever as a Manager in their Exports Group. After a brief stint at Unilever, Atul decided to return to academia and completed both a Masters of Arts in Managerial Science and Applied Economics and a PhD in Strategic Management from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has also been a visiting faculty member at the Indian School of Business, Hyderabad and the Graduate School of Business at Seoul National University. Atul is an award winning teacher who has taught in a variety of programs where the audience has varied from young executives to CEOs. He has worked and / or delivered custom programs on strategy formulation and execution, technological innovation, and entrepreneurship for a range of organizations (many of which are part of the Fortune 500) across the world.

Angel M. Swindell Nix, MA, BCC

Affiliate Faculty, UNC Executive Development

Angel Nix is the President & CEO of The National Institute of Leadership & Organizational Development (NILOD), which is committed to providing excellence in leadership and organizational development services.

As an industrial and organizational psychologist, Nix brings more than 16 years of experience in the fields of leadership and organizational development. Additionally, she possesses a broad experience and knowledge base in executive coaching, executive development, succession planning, human capital management, strategic planning, talent management, development of recruitment and selection systems, performance management, workforce planning and development, and organizational development. Nix takes an experiential learning approach to training. Training topics delivered by Nix over the past 12 months include: EQ Applied at Work: Enhancing Your Emotional Intelligence; Less Stress, More Success; Ethics and Accountability; The Power of Effective Communication; Coaching for Performance Excellence; Servant Leadership; Performance Management; Problem Solving & Decision Making; Managing Through Systems; Building a Team; Building Relationships Through Interpersonal Communication; Leadership Imperatives; Strategic Thinking; and Preparing to Lead. As a facilitator, organizational development practitioner, and board-certified executive coach, Nix creates an initial focus of building rapport and establishing an accurate organizational context to ensure successful outcomes. Angel’s approach to launching developmental solutions for the clients she serves is rooted in the proper assessment of the current state of the organization, its culture, as well as past performance. This may involve needs assessments in the form of surveys, focus groups, stakeholder analysis, and one-on-one interviews with key business leaders, employees, and customers. Angel holds a Master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology as well as a post master’s certificate in organizational development. She has a bachelor’s degree in psychology and biopsychology with a minor in chemistry. Additionally, Angel is a board-certified coach through the Center for Credentialing Education, Inc. Finally, Nix is certified to administer the following 360-Degree Assessments: Executive Dimensions™, Benchmarks®, Prospector®, 360 By Design®, Skillscope®, Global6 360®. She is also certified in the following assessments and training modules: WorkPlace Big 5®, NEO-PI-R®, FIRO-B®, FIRO Business®, 4MAT 4Business Learning Type Measure®, MBTI®, Change Style Indicator®, Influence Style Indicator®, The Organization Workshop®. Angel is the author of Job­ portunity: Your Career GPS – Going Places Successfully in the World of Work.

Heidi Schultz, PhD

Clinical Professor of Management and Corporate Communication

Dr. Schultz teaches Effective Leadership Communication as part of The Water & Wastewater Leadership Center’s curriculum and has served its faculty since 2003.

Heidi Schultz is a professor of management and corporate communication at the UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School where she teaches oral and written business communication. She was instrumental in founding the area and served as its chair for 16 years before stepping down in 2013. Her current interests and research focus on the relationship between rhetorical patterns and writing quickly; storytelling in the corporate setting; and the impact of music intervention in high-stakes presentations. In 2014, Heidi formed BlackInkMetrics, an educational software company focused on developing innovative solutions that serve the needs of writing instructors and their students. The company’s lead product is GradingHelp (www.GradingHelp.com), which Heidi designed based on her 27 years of teaching writing. GradingHelp helps writing instructors grade student work more efficiently and effectively by both automating and customizing feedback. She is the author of two books, Business Scenarios: A Context-Based Approach to Business Communication (McGraw-Hill, 2005) and The Elements of Electronic Communication (Allyn & Bacon, 2000). She is working on another book, Business Communication: Patterns for Effectiveness and Efficiency (McGraw-Hill, forthcoming in 2017). Her corporate and executive clients have included the American Financial Services Association, Bank of America, Cisco, Constella, Duke Energy, GlaxoSmithKline, the Environmental Protection Agency, Lowe’s, Marathon Petroleum, Misys Health Care, Owens Corning, Performance Food Group, Reynolds American, Syngenta, Talecris, U.S. Marines, U.S. Navy, the U.S. Postal Service, W.C. Bradley, Xerox, public health managers, and sports managers. Dr. Schultz started the Business Communication Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler in 1997. It has grown to serve the communication needs of all business students. She is the former director of the Writing Center at UNC-Chapel Hill. She received her PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill, MA from UNC-Charlotte and BA from Lenoir-Rhyne College.

Albert “Al” H. Segars, PhD

PNC Bank Distinguished Professor, Chair, Strategy and Entrepreneurship

Dr. Segars teaches Technology & Business Innovation as part of The Water & Wastewater Leadership Center’s curriculum and has served its faculty since its founding in 2001.

Dr. Albert H. Segars is the PNC Bank Distinguished Professor at UNC Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler School of Business. He is also the Chairperson of the school’s Strategy and Entrepreneurship Area as well as the faculty director of UNC’s Center for Sustainable Enterprise. Along with his experience in academic, Segars has held posts in research and development with Apple (iPod project) and The Defense Research Projects Agency (MSTAR). Dr Segar’s area of research, teaching and consulting expertise include innovation, technology management, as well as entrepreneurship. He has written numerous articles on these topics within the context of strategic planning, product innovation, financial investment, logistics, supply chain, and corporate sustainability. His research has been recognized as “Best in Practice” by The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Society of Information Management (SIM), The Society for Logistics Engineers (SOLE), as well as The Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). Current research projects by Dr. Segars are funded by Apple, DARPA, The National Science Foundation, Carnegie Bosch Institute, The Kaufman Foundation, Bank of America, The Defense Logistics Agency, The Department of Navy, The Medical Logistics Agency, CIBER, and Duke Energy. Along with his work in academe, Dr. Segars was a founding partner of two successful technology startups. He and his brother (Dr. Paul Segars of Duke University) are currently involved in an early stage startup in partnership with Siemens that converts radiology images (digital phantoms) into 3D models for use in calibrating medical equipment. Dr. Segars is a frequently invited speaker for corporate and academic engagements. He provides expert analysis and interviews in media outlets such as The Wall Street Journal, USAToday, The Washington Post, BusinessWeek, CNN, CIO Magazine, The New York Times, National Public Radio, The Financial Times, as well as numerous newspapers and trade journals. He is a featured commentator of the Wall Street Journal’s Startup Journal website (Startupjournal.com) and is also frequently called upon to provide opinion and perspective for leading investment and venture capital firms.