It’s great to see ASU and W. P. Carey out in front on these AI journeys. As all organizations are discovering, the most successful AI outcomes start with understanding the problem to be solved, followed by data science. It’s no surprise that this comes from the business school as AI becomes a powerful arrow in the management quiver.

Embrace Al or be left behind!

Coupling Al’s insights with personal understanding is pivotal.

High school and beyond should encourage students to embrace generative AI as a tool—not to replace learning but to supplement it. The unknown applications and implications are scary, but we’ll fall behind in simple yet meaningful ways if we don’t.

As my proficiency in business continues to expand, I am excited to dive deep into the world of data and uncover the advantages I can gain by implementing advanced machine learning, artificial intelligence, and other state-of-the-art methodologies of big data.

I want to provide a learning experience that mirrors the realities professionals face in the workforce. I am watching my oldest son, Skylar Certo (who coincidentally told me about ChatGPT before I read about it anywhere), enter the workforce after college as a commercial real estate analyst. He is using AI platforms every day to improve his efficiency. We must help our students learn to use this new technology, and banning AI does our students a disservice. We are all trying to figure out how AI makes us better, and our responsibility is to help our students in that endeavor.

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“As we advance technologically, we must remain vigilant about the sustainability of our actions and their effects on society,” says Pei-yu “Sharon” Chen, information systems (IS) chair and Red Avenue Foundation Professor.

In response to these changes, this fall, W. P. Carey debuted the Bachelor of Science in AI in Business and Master of Science in AI in Business (MS-AIB) degrees at the Tempe campus. The bachelor’s degree in AI in Business will equip students with the technical AI and business skills required to succeed in the evolving landscape of technology and information systems while leveraging AI mindfully to deploy it successfully within a business. The MS-AIB program—the first AI business graduate degree in the U.S.—teaches students the technical and managerial skills they need to implement AI into various business scenarios and encourages future leaders to use AI ethically and in ways that enhance societal well-being.

During the inaugural fall 2023 semester, 116 students enrolled in the program’s two three-credit online courses—Investment Management for Educators and Risk Management for Educators, which students can apply toward a graduate degree program. W. P. Carey added a Psychology and Teaching for Educators course to the certification this fall. Since launching, 333 students have participated in the program.

To increase program accessibility for educators, each student in the inaugural cohort received a full scholarship from NGPF. The investment banking company Edward Jones sponsored the spring 2024 cohort. Edward Jones created a financial fitness initiative to promote financial resiliency and literacy for its customers and the broader community through skill development.

“More students and young people are becoming financially literate, making better decisions, and creating better lives for themselves and their families,” says W. P. Carey Director of Development Ronnie Burton. “Giving high school teachers the ability to financially educate their students creates a virtuous cycle in terms of community impact.”

The W. P. Carey School of Business has modernized its MBA with this in mind—leveraging intentional high-touch programming to ensure students see firsthand how powerful connection can be in driving organizations to do great things. Our transformative Connected MBA curriculum and experience shape students into leaders who do, build, and catalyze.

Build: Make an impact, establish your thought leadership, and create a career path on your terms.

Catalyze: Become an action-oriented, connected leader with strong human skills.

Students in ASU’s Planning and Control Systems for Supply Chain Management class had the opportunity to do so last fall while piloting W. P. Coffee, a virtual reality immersive classroom experience.

The program, set in a virtual coffee shop, teaches students about operational capacity management. It allows them to purchase and discard coffee machinery, invest in additional staff to improve efficiency, and change the shop’s appearance. At the same time, the simulation provides live updates on how the decisions affect the shop’s finances and net profit.

“Simulations turn theory into experience, making learning a dynamic journey where mistakes become steppingstones to understanding,” says Hailee Griesenbrock (BS Business Entrepreneurship/Supply Chain Management ’24), one of the 59 pilot class participants.

The W. P. Coffee pilot program builds on W. P. Carey’s initiatives to leverage AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) technologies to enhance student learning and become leaders in using them.

“It’s amazing to see how much we were able to accomplish in a year,” says Dan Gruber, associate dean for Teaching and Learning, clinical professor of management and entrepreneurship, and college catalyst for principled innovation, who co-leads and co-coordinates the school’s faculty- and student-led AR and VR initiatives alongside Thomas Kull, professor of supply chain management.

“We strived to create a platform for building various learning objectives and modalities while also creating worlds the students could relate to,” Kull says.

Students read a case study to prepare for the W. P. Coffee experience. While in the simulation, they wore headsets and hand sensors and altered the shop via pop-up displays on their virtual desktops.

Antonios Printezis, clinical assistant professor of supply chain management, talked students through the experience from a studio down the hall and adjusted shop variables to highlight class learnings.

“I think VR has a lot of exciting applications, especially when you can instantly transfer students to places that otherwise may be impractical or impossible to visit,” says Printezis.

Gruber and Kull introduced VR immersive classroom experiences into W. P. Carey courses this fall, and they’ll implement more during the 2025 academic year, including a bottling factory, a health care facility, and a boardroom experience, in addition to W. P. Coffee.

Students in ASU’s Planning and Control Systems for Supply Chain Management class had the opportunity to do so last fall while piloting W. P. Coffee, a virtual reality immersive classroom experience.

The program, set in a virtual coffee shop, teaches students about operational capacity management. It allows them to purchase and discard coffee machinery, invest in additional staff to improve efficiency, and change the shop’s appearance. At the same time, the simulation provides live updates on how the decisions affect the shop’s finances and net profit.

“Simulations turn theory into experience, making learning a dynamic journey where mistakes become steppingstones to understanding,” says Hailee Griesenbrock (BS Business Entrepreneurship/Supply Chain Management ’24), one of the 59 pilot class participants.

The W. P. Coffee pilot program builds on W. P. Carey’s initiatives to leverage AR (augmented reality) and VR (virtual reality) technologies to enhance student learning and become leaders in using them.

“It’s amazing to see how much we were able to accomplish in a year,” says Dan Gruber, associate dean for Teaching and Learning, clinical professor of management and entrepreneurship, and college catalyst for principled innovation, who co-leads and co-coordinates the school’s faculty- and student-led AR and VR initiatives alongside Thomas Kull, professor of supply chain management.

“We strived to create a platform for building various learning objectives and modalities while also creating worlds the students could relate to,” Kull says.

Students read a case study to prepare for the W. P. Coffee experience. While in the simulation, they wore headsets and hand sensors and altered the shop via pop-up displays on their virtual desktops.

Antonios Printezis, clinical assistant professor of supply chain management, talked students through the experience from a studio down the hall and adjusted shop variables to highlight class learnings.

“I think VR has a lot of exciting applications, especially when you can instantly transfer students to places that otherwise may be impractical or impossible to visit,” says Printezis.

Gruber and Kull introduced VR immersive classroom experiences into W. P. Carey courses this fall, and they’ll implement more during the 2025 academic year, including a bottling factory, a health care facility, and a boardroom experience, in addition to W. P. Coffee.

This process is how one client described her HypnoBreathwork sessions with Whitney Harvey, Esq. (BS Accountancy ’07, JD ’10), an attorney and entrepreneur who founded The Self Coached Lawyer, a coaching and consulting practice that provides career guidance and support to professionals in the legal field. A certified HypnoBreathwork facilitator, Harvey says she incorporates the experiential therapeutic approach—a combination of breathwork exercises, hypnosis, and visioning—into her coaching plans to help clients “release accumulated emotions, overcome limiting beliefs, and pursue their personal and professional goals.”

In this case, Jennifer Lovato, an executive director at a Phoenix law firm, engaged Harvey to help her navigate new changes and challenges at her workplace. After six months of coaching and a handful of HypnoBreathwork sessions, she decided to make a career move.

Not exactly, says Seoin Yoon, an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship who, along with research colleagues, wanted to know why some people feel less positive—and specifically, less competent—when they receive help at work.

The team conducted an experience-sampling study to better understand when receiving help, a mundane and foundational aspect of organizational life, may not be beneficial, and for whom. The study captured the “lived-through” everyday experience of employees for three weeks.

Stago’s journey began after she earned her economics degree from ASU in 2001 and returned to her hometown of Winslow, Arizona, to start a medical supply company with her mother. They quickly encountered the formidable barriers many Native small business owners face on the reservation, such as lengthy and costly business startup procedures. These challenges, familiar to many Native entrepreneurs, are exacerbated by the complex bureaucracy required to access land and utilities, making it considerably more difficult and expensive than nearby towns like Cortez, Colorado.

“We were trying to do business with the tribe,” says Stago, a Navajo Nation and White Mountain Apache member. “That was going to be our market.”

Michael Cooper (BS Marketing ’73, MBA ’74) is celebrating his retirement after 14 years as a board member at Pilgrim’s Pride, a global food and beverage manufacturing company and one of the largest chicken producers in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. Throughout his 50-year career, Cooper held senior leadership roles at Dial, Perdue Farms, and Pilgrim’s Pride. He lives in Paradise Valley, Ariz.

David Chanko (MBA ’79) is an adjunct professor at Grand Canyon University. He teaches finance and economics classes and lives in Scottsdale, Ariz.

AI and analytics have become critical business dimensions, presenting both challenges and opportunities for non-technical leaders. If we want to remain competitive in the digital age, we must learn to effectively lead AI and analytics initiatives to success, even if we don’t understand everything that’s going on under the hood. The book Leading in Analytics: The Seven Critical Tasks for Executives To Master in the Age of Big Data offers a concrete strategy for doing just that: helping readers understand how to maximize their influence in complex data-driven projects.

Written by Joseph Cazier, clinical professor of information systems and associate director of the Center for AI and Data Analytics, the book takes readers through the entire process of guiding AI and analytics initiatives from inception to execution.

As a leader of an AI or analytics initiative, we can’t control every aspect of the process; however, we can ensure an effective outcome by focusing on the high-impact factors we can control. Leading in Analytics describes those factors and gives actionable tips for success.

Drawn from best practice research in the field of analytics, the tasks described in this book are specific to the goal of implementing big data tools at an enterprise level. A contributing team of analytics and business experts share knowledge to show how to choose the right business problem to address, assemble the right team, gather the correct data, select the right tools, and execute a strategic plan to produce an actionable result.

The book also offers a roadmap for building a mature AI and analytics development process, helping you grow and scale your capabilities, and giving tangible guidance for how to wrestle with ethical dilemmas and avoid thorny pitfalls.

“By learning to pay attention to critical tasks in every analytics project, non-technical executives, business leaders, and analytics professionals can guide their organizations to achieve measurable results,” Cazier says.

Read it: news.wpcarey.asu.edu/leading-analytics

• 2018

  Andrew D. Marris
  BA Business Global Management

• 2008

  Michael L. Crain
  BA Information Management
  William M. Vanepps
  BS Marketing

• 2003

  Marc Judnick
  BS Supply Chain Management

• 2001

  John Gibney
  MBA

• 2000

  Chad D. Harwood
  BS Marketing

• 1999

  Randall A. Ross
  MTax

• 1998

  Stuart Darnell
  BS Computer Information Systems
  Jeremy Loops
  BS Supply Chain Management

• 1996

  Natalie Hiebert
  BS Accountancy

• 1995

  Ryan L. Bonnell
  BS Computer Information Systems
  Jeffrey Kayle Estes
  BS Computer Information Systems
  John Garcia Jr.
  BS General Business
  Diane L. Retson
  BS Business Administration

• 1994

  Jason E. Kaderli
  BS Management

• 1993

  Jana L. Frost
  BS Management

• 1992

  P. Thomas Menaugh
  MTax
  Gregory J. Schafer
  BS Accountancy
  Jay Wolpe
  BS Management

• 1991

  Brady P. Benard
  BS Marketing
  Stephan A. Gatto
  BS Finance

• 1990

  Thomas R. Armstrong
  BS Purchasing/Materials Management
  Philip D. Kastle
  MBA
  Jeanne J. Kuisle
  BS Accountancy
  Tressa M. Patton
  BS Finance

• 1989

  Stephen P. Morgan
  BS Finance

• 1988

  Frank F. Covello
  BS Management
  Mark S. Harris
  BS Marketing
  Martin T. Heerema
  BS Marketing
  David B. Vanyo
  BS Marketing

• 1986

  Torin A. Campbell
  BS Finance

• 1984

  Martin Goslar
  PhD Business Administration
  Jeffrey Hubbell
  BS Computer Information Systems
  Frank S. Rodriguez Jr.
  BS Business Administration
  Stephen Seibel
  BS Accountancy
  Robert Sholtis Jr.
  BS Business Administration

• 1983

  Jeanne L. Clark
  BS Management
  Jo W. Johnson
  BS Marketing

• 1982

  Brian J. Behling
  BS Management
  Susan C. Tropsa
  BS Marketing
  Jeanne A. Wexler
  BS Business Administration, MBA ’85

• 1981

  James G. Henry
  MBA
  David Jeong
  BS Accountancy
  Mark F. Kuhlman
  BS Transportation
  William O. Valenzuela
  Accountancy

• 1980

  John Alston
  BS General Business Administration
  Karen Kline-Mina
  MBA
  Penelope Pappatriandafillopoulos
  BS Finance
  Laurie Shapiro
  MBA
  Kenneth B. Vaughn
  BS Accountancy

• 1978

  Donald Buchwald
  BS Accountancy
  David R. Lamparter
  BS Business Administration
  Dennis Newport
  BS Agriculture

• 1976

  Michael Reardon
  BS Economics
  Judith J. Tixier
  BS Business Administration

• 1975

  Paul Topliff
  MBA

• 1974

  Raymond Carlson
  BS Quantitative Systems
  Douglas Ward
  BS Business Administration

• 1973

  Stephen J. Gutkowski
  MBA
  Samuel Ruiz
  BS Management

• 1972

  Doyle E. Price
  BS Management

• 1971

  Robert J. Dale
  BS Management
  John A. Doherty Jr.
  BS Finance

• 1970

  Don W. Hobbs
  MBA
  Gregory S. Kilfoyle
  BS Management

• 1969

  Harold “Hal” K. Brown
  BS Accountancy
  John M. Coles
  BS Finance
  Tom Elliot
  BS Finance, MBA ’71
  Malcom Marr
  BS Marketing
  Paul Rathwell
  BS Agriculture

• 1968

  Stephan D. Jarman
  BS Management
  Bruce F. Johannes
  BS Marketing

• 1967

  William “Bill” Callarman
  MBA, PhD Business Administration ’73

• 1963

  Arthur D. Jacobs
  BS Management, MBA ’66

• 1962

  John Culpepper
  BS Marketing
  Donald Wilson Jr.
  BS Management

• 1960

  Norman Saville
  BS Marketing
  Dean Young
  BS Accountancy

• 1958

  Gary L. Foster
  BS Marketing
  Robert Pierce Jr.
  BS Accountancy
  Norbert T. Williams Jr.
  BS Management

• 1957

  Edward Moomijian
  BS Economics

• 1956

  John Huber
  BS Agriculture

• 1955

  Clarence Finch Jr.
  BS Economics

• 1949

  Dorothy Turley
  BS Business Administration

Two years later, Roinas started in the work world as a Starbucks barista, rising to the corporate office after more than a decade at the Seattle-based global coffee giant.

But something was missing deep down inside Roinas.

“Even though my career grew beautifully, there was always a part of me that knew I needed to go back and get a degree,” Roinas explains. “I always promised myself that I would do that.”

Jackson—who recently retired from his role as president and CEO of Arizona-born Knight-Swift Transportation, the largest full-truckload freight transportation company in North America—was recently honored by ASU’s W. P. Carey School of Business as the 2024 Executive of the Year.

The Dean’s Council, a national group of prominent executives who advise the W. P. Carey School, chose Jackson as the 41st Executive of the Year. At a recent event hosted by the Economic Club of Phoenix to celebrate this recognition, he shared his experiences, the history, and the culture of the Fortune 500 company, which boasts roughly 35,000 employees and $8 billion in annual revenues.

In 2000, Jackson graduated from ASU with global business and financial management degrees. Subsequently, he stepped into a position at Knight Transportation. Jackson rose through the ranks to become its chief financial officer in 2004, president in early 2011, and CEO in 2015. Two years later, he oversaw the company’s merger with Swift Transportation.

Today, Jackson is a member of the Dean’s Council at W. P. Carey and the Greater Phoenix Economic Council. In 2016, Forbes magazine recognized him as one of America’s Most Powerful CEOs 40 and Under. Thanks to a generous donation from Knight-Swift Transportation, the Knight-Swift Logistics Lab opened at the ASU West Valley campus in November 2017.

At the W. P. Carey School’s 2024 Executive of the Year celebration event, Jackson called attention to the next chapter of Knight-Swift leadership, introducing Adam Miller, a fellow ASU graduate (BS Accountancy ’02) who shares with Jackson a similar upbringing in the West Valley and a reputation as a long-standing pillar of the company. Miller stepped into the role of CEO for Knight-Swift in February.

With a new book every two months, there’s always something to learn in the W. P. Carey Alumni Book Club. Read the selected book for six weeks, then be a part of our online discussions to gain new perspectives and grow your network.

Join today to:

• Get ahead of the latest thought leadership in business.
• Connect with other W. P. Carey alums from all over the world.
• Turn insights into action.

We’re currently reading Think Again by Adam Grant — but you can sign up at any time!

Discover the power of books here.