Dean's Cabinet

Associate Vice Dean for MS Programs

Rahsan Akbulut is an Associate Professor of Clinical Finance & Business Economics. She is also serving as the Associate Vice Dean for MS Programs and the Academic Director of the MBA.PM Program.. Rahsan previously served as Academic Director of the MS Finance Program. Her teaching focuses on Microeconomics. She is also a recipient of the Golden Apple Teaching Award.

Chief Marketing Officer and Associate Dean Marketing & Communications

Sara is a marketing strategist and creative leader; previously, she ran an ad agency as a CSO and CEO. She spent her agency years driving growth for the world’s largest brands including Toyota, P&G, PepsiCo, Roche, Microsoft, Netflix, and Westfield. Her campaigns have won Cannes Lions, Effies, and Chiat awards.

President of the Marshall Faculty Council

Murat Bayiz is a professor of clinical data sciences and operations. He has more than two decades of combined management consulting and academic experience and specializes in operations strategy. In recent years he’s received numerous Golden Apple awards for teaching excellence. Previously, Murat was a management consultant at PwC and Kiran Analytics.

Chief Information Officer and Chair of the Operational Cabinet

Cathy Bindewald came to USC from Ohio State University, where she served in various leadership roles, including Chief Information Officer for the College of Veterinary Medicine, and the Director of IT Strategic Planning and Communications. Before joining Ohio State, Cathy was an IT consultant for AMS, and she began her career in the State of South Carolina specializing in children's policy for the Governor and Legislature.

Associate Vice Dean for Teaching and Innovation

Miriam Burgos is a professor of clinical marketing and specializes in multi-cultural marketing, brand management, and sales management. Prior to joining USC, she worked in the consumer packaged goods industry with P&G where she developed expertise in how a multi-national corporation successfully takes a product to market.

Chief of Staff

April is a higher education administrator and culture champion. She has worked in higher education institutions on both coasts including a liberal arts college, a large 2-year system as well as public and private R1 research universities.

Associate Dean of the PhD Program

Yingying Fan is the centennial chair in business administration and a professor of data sciences and operations. She received her PhD in operations research and financial engineering from Princeton. Her research interests include statistics, data science, machine learning, economics, big data and business applications, artificial intelligence, and blockchain.

Associate Vice Dean for Research

Peer’s research and teaching are in the fields of organization theory and strategic management, with a focus on modeling and understanding causal complexity. He has also been working for more than two decades on the use of set-analytic methods such as fuzzy set QCA in management and the social sciences.

Dean of the Leventhal School of Accounting

William Holder is an expert on financial reporting, and auditing. His research has been published in The Accounting Review, Journal of Accountancy, Financial Executive, International Journal of Accounting and others. He received the Gold Medal Award for Distinguished Service (the highest honor provided) by the AICPA and numerous other awards.

Chief Financial Officer and Vice Dean of Finance & Administration

Janet previously served as the vice dean for finance and administration at Columbia’s Business School. Along with responsibility for administrative operations and financial oversight of a $280 million budget, she was instrumental in the transformational $500M capital project building two new facilities in Manhattan.

Chair of the Staff Council

Sara McLachlan is in her second year on Marshall’s staff council and her first year serving as chair. She is the senior associate director for the specialized masters programs and manages seven of the graduate certificate programs. She is a founding member of the DEI fellows program and serves on the operational cabinet.

Vice Dean of Teaching and Faculty Affairs

Patricia Mills specializes in partnership, real estate, and individual tax issues. She is a co-author of CCH’s treatise Taxation of Partnerships and Partners, and has earned several Marshall and Leventhal teaching and mentoring awards. Previously she spent 20 years in private practice and is a frequent speaker on tax topics.

Chief Development Officer and Associate Dean External Relations

Rachel’s advancement career spans nearly 30 years at USC. She leads a dynamic team that raises transformational gifts, and engages alumni, parents and friends to accelerate Marshall’s trajectory through groundbreaking research, student support, experiential learning opportunities, and capital projects.

Senior Vice Dean for Academic Programs

Ramandeep S. Randhawa is an operations research scholar whose research interests include designing service systems, revenue management, stochastic modeling, and machine learning, and he has numerous publications on these topics in the leading journals. He currently serves as an Area Chair for the Operations Research journal.

Senior Vice Dean of Faculty and Academic Affairs

Greys Sošić holds a PhD from the University of British Columbia, and a master's and a bachelor's degree from the University of Zagreb, Croatia. Her research interests include supply chain management, sustainability, competition and cooperation in supply chains, with emphasis on coalition stability.

Vice Dean for MBA Programs

Leigh Tost studies the psychological and sociological dynamics of hierarchy and diversity in organizations. Her research on hierarchy focuses on questions about how power differences in teams and organizations affect team performance and ethical decision making.

Vice Dean of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Sarah Townsend studies the psychological foundations of inequality. Her research reveals the dysfunctional behaviors and physiological costs that can result when individuals’ cultural norms collide with the dominant cultural norms of organizations.