NACS Innovation Leadership Program at MIT

The NACS Master of Convenience designation acknowledges the hard work and investment NACS members have made in their personal leadership development. It is awarded to convenience retailers who have attended 3 or more of the 5 NACS Executive Education programs. For questions, contact Brandi Mauro, NACS Education Program Manager: bmauro@convenience.org or (703) 518-4223.

Pierre Azoulay is the International Programs Professor of Management at the MIT Sloan School of Management, and a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research.

His current research focuses on empirical studies of the supply of biomedical innovators, particularly at the interface of academia and the biopharmaceutical industry. He also is interested in the topic of academic entrepreneurship, having recently concluded a major study of the antecedents and consequences of academic patenting. In the past, he has investigated the impact of superstar researchers on the research productivity of their colleagues, and the outsourcing strategies of pharmaceutical firms, in particular the role played by contract research organizations in the clinical trials process.

At MIT Sloan, he teaches courses on competitive strategy and innovation strategy to the EMBA students and Sloan Fellows, as well as a PhD class on the economics of ideas, innovation, and entrepreneurship.

He holds a Diplôme d’Études Supérieures de Gestion from the Institut National des Télécommunications, an MA from Michigan State University, and a PhD in management from MIT.

Court Chilton is a Senior Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He has helped large organizations produce business results from learning, coaching, and enterprise-wide change efforts for the last 20 years. His clients have included GE Capital, Deloitte, Fidelity, MIT, Bank of America, Ixis Asset Management, Novartis, Merck, Genzyme, Shire, TJX, Home Depot, Clifford Chance, and Baker McKenzie.

Court has worked internationally on a wide variety of business-building initiatives: creating “branded client experiences;” relationship management and service improvement; sales training and leadership development; executive education and coaching; implementing Six Sigma; professional practice management, and re-engineering the learning function. In the course of these initiatives, he has also developed computer simulations, on-line 360 feedback, and process-embedded e-learning. He is an effective facilitator and coach for senior management teams.Prior to working for MIT’s Sloan School, Court was a senior vice president of The Forum Corporation, based in New York and Boston. In the course of 14 years at Forum, he was responsible for the firm’s core leadership, teaming, and total quality offerings. He also managed the $20M+ mid-Atlantic region for the firm and several strategic client relationships.

Court has worked with a number of educational institutions to design advanced courses, coach faculty, and develop tools that help link learning with work. He has also served as part of a “coaching faculty” for MBA candidates. In addition, through the District Management Council, he has consulted with educational institutions such as the Montclair (NJ) and Lancaster (PA) Public Schools to raise student achievement, decrease costs, and improve operations.

Between college and graduate school Court worked in book and magazine publishing in a variety of marketing roles. He lives outside Boston with his family. He has served on his town’s Finance Committee and recently completed four years of service on the town’s School Committee.

Court received a BA ( magna cum laude with high honors) from Middlebury College and an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College.

Roberto M. Fernandez is the William F. Pounds Professor in Management and a Professor of Organization Studies at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Fernandez currently serves as the co-director of the Economic Sociology PhD Program and served as the head of the Behavioral and Policy Sciences area from 2008-2010. His research focuses on the areas of organizations, social networks, and race and gender stratification. Fernandez has extensive experience doing field research in organizations, including an exhaustive five-year case study of a plant retooling and relocation. His current research focuses on the organizational processes surrounding the hiring of new talent using data collected in 14 organizations. He is the author of more than 50 articles and research papers published in top academic journals in his field.

Fernandez holds a BA in sociology from Harvard University and an MA and a PhD in sociology from the University of Chicago.

Renée Richardson Gosline is a Senior Lecturer in the Management Science group at the MIT Sloan School of Management and a Principal Research Scientist at MIT's Initiative on The Digital Economy.

She is a 2020 honoree on the Thinkers50 Radar List of thinkers who are “putting a dent in the universe,” and has been named one of the World’s Top 40 Professors under 40 by Poets and Quants. Gosline is an expert on the intersection between behavioral science and technology, and the implications for cognitive bias in human decision-making. She is a leading thinker on the science of digital brand strategy and her research and expertise have been published in various academic and trade publications.

Renée’s research examines how social structure and technology (e.g., Digital Customer Experience, Status, Social Media) affect performance and self-perception (as featured in her Tedx talk, “The Outsourced Mind”). Her projects have examined: how cognitive style predicts preference for AI versus human input; the interaction of brand status and placebo effects in performance; how consumers determine “real” from “fake” products; the circumstances under which customers perceive value in platforms; and the effects of storytelling in social media on trust and persuasion. In order to address these issues rigorously, Gosline employs experimental methodology, both in the field and the laboratory.

Renée enjoys teaching MBA and Executive Education classes on CX (Customer Experience), Brand strategy, Nudge Strategy, and Experimentation. She has also collaborated with a variety of firms on CX, Digital Media Strategy, and Leadership. Prior to academia, she was a marketing practitioner at LVMH Moet Hennessy and Leo Burnett.

Renée conducted her Undergraduate, Master’s, and Doctoral education at Harvard University.

Zeynep Ton is a Professor of the Practice at the MIT Sloan School of Management.

Zeynep is currently examining how organizations can design and manage their operations in a way that satisfies employees, customers, and investors simultaneously. Her earlier research focused on the critical role of store operations in retail supply chains. Her work has been published in a variety of journals, including Organization Science, Production and Operations Management, and the Harvard Business Review. In addition, she has written numerous cases that explore different approaches to managing retail stores and labor.

In 2014, Zeynep published her findings in a book, The Good Jobs Strategy: How the Smartest Companies Invest in Employees to Lower Costs and Boost Profits. The book draws on 15 years of research to show that the key to offering good jobs to employees, great service to customers, and superior returns to investors is combining investment in employees with specific operational choices that increase employees’ productivity, contribution, and motivation.

After her book was released, retail leaders started reaching out to Zeynep to understand how to implement the Good Jobs Strategy in their organizations, or to describe how they were already adopting the strategy. Zeynep cofounded the nonprofit Good Jobs Institute to help them transform through assessments, workshops, and longer term partnerships.

Prior to MIT Sloan, Zeynep spent seven years as an assistant professor in the Technology and Operations Management area at Harvard Business School. She has received several awards for teaching excellence both at HBS and MIT Sloan.

Zeynep lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with her husband and four children. A native of Turkey, she first came to the US on a volleyball scholarship from the Pennsylvania State University. She received her BS in industrial and manufacturing engineering there and her DBA from the Harvard Business School.

Catherine Tucker is the Sloan Distinguished Professor of Management and a Professor of Marketing at MIT Sloan. She is also Chair of the MIT Sloan PhD Program.

Her research interests lie in how technology allows firms to use digital data and machine learning to improve performance, and in the challenges this poses for regulation. Tucker has particular expertise in online advertising, digital health, social media, and electronic privacy. Her research studies the interface between marketing, the economics of technology, and law.

She has received an NSF CAREER Award for her work on digital privacy, the Erin Anderson Award for an Emerging Female Marketing Scholar and Mentor, the Garfield Economic Impact Award for her work on electronic medical records, the Paul E. Green Award for contributions to the practice of Marketing Research, the William F. O'Dell Award for most significant, long-term contribution to Marketing, and the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science Long Term Impact Award for long-run impact on marketing.

She is a cofounder of the MIT Cryptoeconomics Lab which studies the applications of blockchain and also a co-organizer of the Economics of Artificial Intelligence initiative sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. She has been a Visiting Fellow at All Souls College, Oxford. She has testified to Congress regarding her work on digital privacy and algorithms, and presented her research to the OECD and the ECJ.

Tucker is coeditor at Quantitative Marketing and Economics, associate editor at Management Science, Marketing Science, and the Journal of Marketing Research and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. She teaches MIT Sloan's course on Pricing and the EMBA course "Marketing Management for the Senior Executive." She has received the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching as well as being voted "Teacher of the Year" at MIT Sloan.

She holds a PhD in economics from Stanford University and a BA from the University of Oxford.

Dr. George Westerman works at the dynamic intersection of executive leadership and technology strategy. During more than 17 years with MIT Sloan School of Management, he has written three award-winning books, including Leading Digital: Turning Technology Into Business Transformation. As a pioneering researcher on digital transformation, George has published papers in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, and other top journals. He is now focused on helping employers, educators, and other groups to rethink the process of workforce learning around the world.

George is co-chair of the MIT Sloan CIO Leadership Awards, a member of the Digital Strategy Roundtable for the US Library of Congress, and faculty director for two executive courses at MIT Sloan. He works frequently with senior management teams and industry groups around the world. Prior to earning a Doctorate from Harvard Business School, he gained more than 13 years of experience in product development and technology leadership roles.