John Gallemore studies how firms’ economic and financial reporting behavior are shaped by corporate tax policy and enforcement.

His research has been published in top accounting journals, such as the Journal of Accounting & Economics, Journal of Accounting Research and Contemporary Accounting Research. His research and expertise have been featured by media outlets such as The Washington Post, Chicago Tribune and Bloomberg.

Dr. Gallemore teaches Strategic Cost Analysis and Performance Evaluation in the full-time MBA program.

A triple Tar Heel, he joins the faculty from the University of Chicago, where he won the Emory Williams Award for Teaching Excellence, the school-wide teaching award decided by students across all MBA programs. He was named one of Poets & Quants “Best 40 Under 40” business school professors.

As a PhD student at UNC Kenan-Flagler, he won several awards, including the Outstanding Doctoral Student Award and Deloitte Foundation Doctoral Fellowship Award. He was an American Accounting Association/Deloitte Doctoral Consortium Fellow and a FASB Doctoral Consortium Fellow.

He earned his PhD in accounting, his MBA in finance and his BSBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler.

Irfaun Karim ’24 is from St. Louis, Missouri. As a Business Administration and Global Studies double major, his professional interests include urban development, finance and international trade. Irfaun decided to become a Kenan Scholar because of his personal mission to support others social and financial wellness through business.

In addition to being a Kenan Scholar, Irfaun is a Wood Family Scholar, Olin Fleischer Scholar and a Martin Luther King Jr. Scholarship Liaison. He serves as the Student Leadership Coordinator for Diversity Outreach at UNC Student Life & Leadership and is involved in UNC Ascend, International Business Club and UNC Club Handball. Irfaun’s hobbies include watching sports, traveling, listening to music and learning about airlines and airports.

Professor Kahn is the Helen F. and Fred H. Gowen Professor in the Social Sciences and a Professor of Economics at the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on labor economics with interests in organizations and education. Her most recent work examines the impact of COVID-19 on the labor market. In other ongoing work, she evaluates public-private workforce development programs and whether they help to bridge the skills gap. In her previous work, she has examined how the Great Recession accelerated the adoption of labor-replacing technologies, exacerbating polarization of the U.S. economy. In previous work, she examined the consequences of graduating from college in an economic downturn, finding surprisingly long-lasting, negative wage effects. That paper won the award for the best paper published in Labour economics in 2010/11.

She was previously an associate professor of economics at Yale School of Management. From 2010 to 2011 Kahn served on President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers as the senior economist for labor and education policy. She has also been a visiting fellow at Brookings Institution and is currently a Research Associate at NBER and an IZA Research Fellow. She is currently on the executive board for the Society of Labor Economists. She holds an A.B. in economics from the University of Chicago (2003) and an M.A. and a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University (2008).

Ricardo Perez-Truglia is an Associate Professor (with tenure) at the Haas School of Business.
Ricardo conducts research in the intersection between behavioral economics and other fields, such as public economics and labor economics. Ricardo’s research has been published in premier academic journals and has been featured in media outlets such as the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Economist and National Public Radio. In 2020, Ricardo was named a Sloan Research Fellow, an award that recognizes outstanding early-career faculty who have the potential to revolutionize their fields of study.

Ricardo intends his research to have practical applications. He works for Amazon as a Scholar, advising the People-centered Science team in various projects. Ricardo’s passion for impact extends to the classroom. He teaches Microeconomics for MBAs. In 2022, he was awarded the Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in MBA Teaching.

John C. Haltiwanger, is a Distinguished University Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Maryland. He is also the first recipient of the Dudley and Louisa Dillard Professorship in 2013. He received his Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins University in 1981. After serving on the faculty of UCLA and Johns Hopkins, he joined the faculty at Maryland in 1987. In the late 1990s, he served as Chief Economist of the U.S. Census Bureau. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau, and a Fellow of the Society of Labor Economics and the Econometric Society. He has played a major role in developing and studying U.S. longitudinal firm-level data. Using these data, he has developed new statistical measures and analyzed the determinants of firm-level job creation, job destruction and economic performance. He has explored the implications of these firm dynamics for aggregate U.S. productivity growth and for the U.S. labor market.

The statistical and measurement methods he has helped develop to measure and study firm dynamics have been increasingly used by many statistical agencies around the world. His own research increasingly uses the data and measures on firm dynamics from a substantial number of advanced, emerging and transition economies. His work with the statistical agencies has been recently recognized in his being awarded the Julius Shiskin Award for economic statistics in 2013, the Roger Herriott Award for innovation in federal statistics in 2014,  and the Global Entrepreneurship Research Award in 2020. He has published more than 100 academic articles and numerous books including Job Creation and Destruction(with Steven Davis and Scott Schuh, MIT Press).

The research interests of Abhinav Gupta lie in empirical corporate finance with a focus on entrepreneurial finance and private equity. He is especially interested in understanding how these topics interact with those in the broader economics discipline such as labor economics..

Dr. Gupta teaches courses in financial modeling.

Before he began his academic career, he worked in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group.

He earned his PhD in finance from New York University Stern School of Business; his MBA, receiving an Institute Gold Medal, from IIM Ahmedabad; and his B.Tech. in electrical engineering, earning a President’s Silver Medal, from IIT Kharagpur.

Craston Artis is making a difference in his community. And, his MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler is helping him do it.

Craston recently launched EngageWIT, an education technology platform focused on virtual student teaching. He has also expanded his consulting practice, taking on a variety of projects that support economic development within the Black community.

One of those projects was with Corning, which engaged Craston to help expand its philanthropic footprint in North Carolina. Craston worked on a team that evaluated opportunities for the company to invest in community-based organizations in the Black community.

“We identified the needs of the community in different areas — healthcare, education and economic development,” Craston explains. “But I also brought my organizational efficiency lens to the table to evaluate how filling those needs could bring Corning the return on investment they were after.”

Next, through connections he made with the Kenan Institute, the School’s thought leadership think tank, Craston has been working as a consultant for NCGrowth to explore ways to support the southeast Raleigh community, a predominantly Black area of the city.

“We’re looking at how to ensure that construction projects in the Black community as a result of the affordable housing bond can provide more work for Black contractors and subcontractors,” says Craston. “It’s been a great example of how I can apply my business mindset to address a community issue.”

After earning his undergraduate degree in history and education, Craston taught social studies at a Chicago high school before moving on to administrative and consulting roles for schools, districts and government agencies. He built a strong personal network in the industry, which helped him find numerous opportunities to provide coaching, curriculum development and leadership training.

For his next career move, Craston considered two options — charter-school management or an entrepreneurial venture to deliver virtual coaching. Each pursuit was exciting and each would challenge him in a different way. School leadership would require strong organizational management skills, while the entrepreneurial path would require a solid understanding of marketing, operations, strategy, and finance.

To bolster his knowledge and confidence in these areas, Craston turned his attention to pursuing an MBA. He chose UNC Kenan-Flagler’s Weekend Executive MBA program for its reputation, flexibility, and immersive format, which would allow him to build strong, personal connections with his peers and professors.

It also felt like “his kind of program.”

“From the classroom visit to the interview, it felt right,” shares Craston. “It felt more like a family, and more personal, than what I experienced at other schools with similar reputations.”

In the program, Craston built critical skills across numerous dimensions, in operations, strategic planning, product development, and emerging uses for technology. In a marketing course, he learned how to think through processes within a team environment, a skill he had previously only tackled alone. Coursework in entrepreneurship exposed him to new ways to launch a business — franchising, acquisitions, search funds, and private equity. This course also helped Craston bring his vision for a virtual coaching service to fruition by providing him with new tools that he was able to apply immediately to his growing enterprise.

While the skills he learned in the classroom were important, Craston deeply valued the connections he was able to make with his classmates. “Whether it was at the social events set up by the program or just us hanging out in the lounge after class, I made some really strong connections,” he explains. “I learned a lot about other industries that really intrigued me.”

Craston’s MBA experience increased his confidence and helped him recognize the impact he could make within the Black community. “A lot of conversations in business are not considerate of communities of color,” he said. “In the program, I figured out how to have these conversations in a way that was fruitful for me and that I think was fruitful for my classmates as well.”

With his new skills, connections, and confidence, Craston plans to bridge further into economic development to support his community. He’s looking into microprivate equity opportunities that could help small businesses find the growth capital they need to scale up and take on larger contracts. Ultimately, he believes this focus could help him build a firm specializing in this work.

To those considering an MBA, Craston suggests, “If you think of your MBA as part of a professional journey that extends for years beyond your time in the program, you’ll better appreciate its gems. This is one of those times where you want to step back and see the bigger picture.”

Cody provides research support on academic and translational research projects in collaboration with UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School faculty, the institute’s chief economist and staff.

Before joining the institute, he was an intern at the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development in the Productivity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship Division performing data analytics and researching the demand for artificial intelligence-related skills in European labor markets.

Cody is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in economics at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He holds a master’s degree in applied economics and bachelor’s degree in economics from UNC-Greensboro.

Dr. Audra Rankin is a pediatric nurse practitioner and clinical assistant professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Nursing. Dr. Rankin received a Bachelor of Science in Nursing from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a Master of Science in Nursing from Vanderbilt University and a Doctor of Nursing Practice from Duke University. She received a Post-Master Certificate in Nursing Education from Johns Hopkins University and a Master of Business Administration from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Dr. Rankin maintains active certifications as a Certified Pediatric Nurse Practitioner, Pediatric Mental Health Specialist, Certified Lactation Counselor and Certified Nurse Educator.

She has served as a scholar and faculty at the Harvard Macy Program for Educators in Health Professions at Harvard University and was named an American Association of Colleges of Nursing Faculty Health Policy Fellow. Dr. Rankin maintains an active program of scholarship on childhood obesity prevention, interprofessional education, and health policy.

Paul Yoo is a Finance Ph.D. Candidate at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill.

Yoo’s current research interests cover ESG Integration, Sustainable Finance, FinTech & Banking, and Monetary Economics. His job market paper empirically identifies significant pricing effects of the two distinct motives for ESG integration: (i) non-pecuniary and (ii) risk-mitigating preferences.

Yoo worked as a Research Assistant at the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. He graduated from Columbia University with a BA in Financial Economics and concentrations in Mathematics and Business Management.