M.S.M.I. Faculty
Peter Johnson, M.S., D.P.S.
Program Co-Director, Clinical Associate Professor
Dr. Johnson teaches customer-driven marketing, sales management, consumer relationship management, and services marketing at the Gabelli School. His research focuses on the use of organizational improvisational for the rapid development of marketing strategies and to improve marketing performance. He also has investigated the effects of creativity on digital marketing environments.
Dr. Johnson’s academic accomplishments are enhanced by his experience in the corporate world. He has been a managing partner at Marketmaker Capital, an investment firm that specializes in raising capital for technology companies. He has worked as a senior agency executive at Bozell, Jacobs, Kenyon and Eckhardt and at Grey Advertising in New York, where he created integrated marketing campaigns for global clients in consumer goods, financial services, government services, and industrial equipment. In 1995, he was part of a management team that built one of the first digital ad agencies, Poppe-Tyson/Modem Media. He also helped lead US Interactive to a successful IPO in 1999.
Dr. Johnson holds a B.A. in economics and an M.S. in integrated marketing communications from Northwestern University, and he earned his doctoral degree in marketing and international economics from Pace University in New York. He is a member of the Academy of Marketing Science, the American Marketing Association, and the Direct Marketing Educational Foundation.
Linda Luca
Program Co-Director, Adjunct Professor
Linda Luca is a former executive vice president and Group Managing Director at McCann-Erikson in New York City where she managed the Unilever Foods and Major League Baseball accounts.
She joined the M.S.M.I. program as the co-director supporting and assisting students to excel in their graduate studies. For the last 12 years, Linda has served as an adjunct professor teaching Integrated Marketing Communications and Marketing Principles at the Gabelli School of Business at Fordham University in the Bronx. In 2013, she was honored with the University’s Cura Personalis Award, given to the faculty member who most demonstrates care of the whole person.
Linda received her M.B.A. in Finance from Pace University, Lubin School of Business in 1981. She received her BA in History from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor in 1971.
Sertan Kabadayi, Ph.D.
Professor
Dr. Kabadayi is consistently rated as one of the best teachers in the Gabelli School. His academic research focuses on distribution channels (multiple channel strategies and channel configurations), the use of control mechanisms in buyer-seller relationships, and website trust and loyalty. He has presented his research at various conferences and has had his work published in academic journals that include the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business Research, Industrial Marketing Management, and Psychology & Marketing.
Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Dr. Kabadayi worked as a sales coordinator and product manager for Philips Electronics and, subsequently, as a product and brand manager for Electrolux Home Appliances. He was actively involved in developing new marketing strategies for the Electrolux and AEG home appliance brands and repositioning them in the Turkish market. He also played a key role in planning and introducing new product lines.
Dr. Kabadayi received his bachelor’s degree from Bosphorus University in Istanbul, his M.B.A. in marketing from Yeditepe University in Istanbul, and his Ph.D. in marketing from the City University of New York.
Timothy D. Malefyt, Ph.D.
Clinical Professor
Before entering academia, Dr. Malefyt worked for many years as a corporate anthropologist at global advertising agencies, applying anthropological and cultural approaches to consumer research for developing brand and strategic insights.
As vice president and director of cultural discoveries for BBDO Worldwide advertising in New York City, Dr. Malefyt led a global in-agency research group for a variety of companies, including AT&T, Campbell's, eBay, FedEx, GE, Gillette, HBO, Johnson & Johnson, Masterfoods, New Balance, Procter & Gamble, and PepsiCo. Before that, he worked as senior account planner at D'Arcy, Masius, Benton & Bowles advertising in Detroit, where he helped generate insights for the successful relaunch of the Cadillac automobile brand.
Dr. Malefyt received his bachelor’s degree in psychology from Fordham University and a master’s degree and Ph.D. in cultural anthropology from Brown University. He is a Fulbright and National Science Foundation scholar.
Mohammad Nejad, PhD
Associate Professor, Area Chair
Dr. Nejad teaches Data-Driven Marketing Decision-Making and Marketing Decision Models at the graduate level. In these two courses, he brings together topics from modeling, data mining, statistics, database management, and substantive areas of marketing to help students develop the necessary skills to bridge the gap between managerial needs and technical expertise. He also teaches Marketing Research, the senior-year Integrated Project, and Data-Driven Marketing Decision Making at the undergraduate level.
Dr. Nejad’s research focuses on the areas of innovation diffusion, adoption, and resistance; social contagion; and social networks. In particular, he studies the introduction and management of new products and services, exploring how firms can enhance their innovations’ chances of successful diffusion by employing complex interactions among consumers. He has collaborated on research projects at the Enterprise Simulation and Optimization Lab and at the FedEx Center for Supply Chain Management, two premier research centers within the FedEx Institute of Technology. His research has appeared or will appear in the Journal of Retailing, European Journal of Operational Research, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Journal of Product and Brand Management, Journal of Financial Services Marketing, and Services Marketing Quarterly.
Before he became an academic, Dr. Nejad worked as a software developer and later as a senior software engineer at CSG Systems and Bank of Montreal. He also co-founded an information technology company and served as its CEO.
He received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from Sharif University of Technology, his MS in executive management from Iran University of Science and Technology, and his PhD in marketing from the University of Memphis.
If you have questions for our faculty, email us at [email protected].