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Experts
Asa Palley
Associate Professor of Business Administration
Asa is an Associate Professor of Business Administration in the Data Analytics & Decision Sciences (DADS) area at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. He also serves as an Associate Editor for Management Science.
At Darden, Asa teaches core Decision Analysis courses in the MBA program. He was named as one of Poets & Quants 40-Under-40 Best MBA Professors in 2024.
Asa’s research is centered in the field of decision analysis, which uses quantitative models to help individuals and organizations make better decisions.
Anthony Palomba
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Anthony Palomba is fascinated by the media and entertainment industries and the strategic forces reshaping them. As a media scholar specializing in machine learning, causal inference, and applied econometrics, his research examines how audiences engage with content and how technology transforms competition across the media, advertising, and gaming industries. His work explores the behavioral and economic mechanisms behind entertainment consumption and develops empirical models to understand and predict audience patterns.
Before joining academia, Palomba served as a research manager at Ipsos, leading projects for clients including HBO, Facebook, CNN, Fox Sports 1, and NBCUniversal/Comcast. During his doctoral studies, he collaborated with Nielsen to study how millennials consume and engage with media products and services.
B.A., Manhattanville College; M.A., Syracuse University; Ph.D., University of Florida; M.S., Purdue University (in progress)
Chris Parker
Richard S. Reynolds Professorship in Business Administration
Richard S. Reynolds Professorship in Business Administration Chris Parker teaches core Operations Management courses in Darden’s MBA and ExecMBA programs. His research focuses on exploring the way in which information changes consumer, firm, and employee behavior and the impact this has on broad market outcomes. His work falls broadly into five application areas with significant overlap: (1) Information and Communication Technology for Development (ICT4D), (2) IT-Enabled Retail Models, (3) Financial Services Operations, and (4) Supply Chain Coordination, and (5) Political Engagement. In each of these areas Chris aims to use the necessary data and analyses to rigorously identify areas in which information technology is beneficial, as well as to make policy suggestions to mitigate any detrimental effects. His work has appeared in leading operations management and information systems journals including Management Science, Manufacturing & Services Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, and the Journal of Management Information Systems.
Prior to Darden, Chris was at American University and also the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University after completing his PhD in Management Science and Operations from London Business School in 2012. He was a Visiting Professor at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business in 2016-2017. He has taught classes related to Python programming, business analytics, supply chain analytics, data visualization, statistics, and supply chain design.
Bidhan L. Parmar
Shannon Smith Emerging Scholar in Business; Associate Professor of Business Administration
Parmar is an authority on how to make good decisions — one of the toughest challenges in leading a business. He focuses on how managers make decisions and collaborate in uncertain and changing environments to create value for stakeholders. Parmar’s work helps executives better handle ambiguity in their decision-making. His recent research examines the impact of authority on moral decision-making in organizations.
His book, Radical Doubt: Turning Uncertainty Into Surefire Success, was published in 2025.
B.A., MBA, Ph.D., University of Virginia
Michael Porter
Associate Professor of Business Administration
Porter’s areas of expertise include forecasting, machine learning and anomaly detection, with special focus on event prediction and pattern detection. The models he’s developed have been applied to Yelp, crime and terrorism and led to a winning performance in the National Institute of Justice’s Real-Time Crime Forecasting Challenge.
Prior to his joint appointment at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business and School of Engineering and Applied Science, Porter taught at the University of Alabama and served as a principal research scientist at Digital Globe and project engineer at Sanford/Newell Brands.
B.S., Purdue University; M.S., Vanderbilt University; Ph.D., University of Virginia
Lili Powell
Julie Logan Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration, Darden School of Business; Kluge-Schakat Professor, UVA School of Nursing; Director, Compassionate Care Initiative, UVA School of Nursing
Powell’s current academic interests are mindful communication and leadership presence. She also has expertise in leadership and management communication, corporate reputation and diversity. In addition to her roles as professor at the UVA Darden School of Business and UVA School of Nursing, she also serves as director at the University's Compassionate Care Initiative.
Powell has authored numerous cases and is co-author of Women in Business: The Changing Face of Leadership. She is currently working on a new book — Present: Leadership as Wise Practice. She has presented her work at the Academy of Management, the Association for Business Communication, the Management Communication Association, the National Communication Association, and the Reputation Institute’s Conference on Reputation, Image, Identity, and Competitiveness conferences.
Powell has been a consultant, facilitator, instructor and coach to a number of individuals and organizations. Her clients have included the Council for Public Relations Firms, Federal Bureau of Investigation, KPMG, Lagos (Nigeria) Public Schools, National Industries for the Blind, Premier, Providian Corporation, United Technologies, University of Virginia School of Medicine and World Bank. She has taught internationally and worked with Executive MBA students from IAE Business School (Argentina), IBMEC Sao Paulo (Brazil) and the Stockholm School of Economics (Sweden).
B.A., M.A., University of Virginia; Ph.D., Northwestern University
Melanie Prengler
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Prengler’s research focuses on employees at the leading edge of two trends in organizations. First, she studies how employees in remote work arrangements create a sense of workplace out of nonwork space. Second, she studies how employees can reduce systemic discrimination in their organizations via allyship and anti-racism. In particular, she has examined the strategies used by Black law enforcement officers to reduce discrimination in police organizations and encourage diversity, equity and inclusion in both organizations and society. She has also investigated how employees can be allies to postpartum women returning to work, as well as how allies can maintain resilience through allyship shortcomings.
Prengler’s research has received numerous awards, including the 2021 AOM MOC Division's Best Student-Led Paper award, a 2021 SIOP Anti-Racism grant, a Mays Innovation Research Center grant, and her dissertation was recognized as a finalist in the 2021 INFORMS Dissertation Proposal Competition.
B.A., Texas A&M University; M.A., Sam Houston State University; Ph.D., Texas A&M University Mays School of Business