NACS Financial Leadership Program at Wharton

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.

Jim Austin, a former senior executive at Baxter Healthcare, combines business strategy and organizational development theory with extensive industry experience. His expertise is in working with senior management on strategic planning, organizational change, strategy execution and new business growth. In June 2016, Springer published his book, Leading Strategic Change in an Era of Healthcare Transformation, co-authored with two other Brown University faculty, for healthcare leaders trying to drive transformational change in their institution.

He has tailored and delivered senior-level seminars for Wharton Executive Education on Strategy, Strategic Execution, Scenario Planning and Critical Thinking for a number of leading companies including Boston Scientific, Coca-Cola, Lincoln Financial, GE, and Hitachi. Jim is a Business Management Professor at the Lake Forest Graduate School of Management where he received the “Most Distinguished Corporate Education Faculty Member” (2009-10) and the “Learning Excellence” (2012) awards. He is also an Adjunct Faculty in the Department of Health Systems Management, College of Health Sciences, Rush University, where he teaches a graduate seminar on Healthcare Ethics.

From 2005-2016, Mr. Austin worked at Decision Strategies International, leaving as a Senior Principal. There he led numerous projects including scenarios of the future for a Medical Devices firm; R&D priorities for a major consumer products company; a strategic plan for the American College of Radiology; scenarios of the future for the League of Southeastern Credit Unions; a new vision/priorities at RAND Health and Board strategic planning facilitation for the United Nations Federal Credit Union. Jim now heads his own Executive Education/Consulting firm, JH Austin Associates, Inc.

Prior to joining Decision Strategies, Jim worked for 12 years at Baxter Healthcare, the last four as Vice President of Strategy Development for the Renal Division. Jim identified new business opportunities, facilitated annual strategy planning processes and worked with senior management on organizational development for this rapidly growing, nearly $2B Division. Before Baxter, Jim was Assistant to the President for ANCHOR HMO, a subsidiary of Rush Medical Center, Chicago. Prior to his move to Chicago, Jim worked as a Consultant for Arthur D. Little, Inc., where he led a number of large-scale planning, business development and strategic positioning studies. Between college and graduate school, Jim spent four years as an Economist/Planning Officer in the Ministry of Finance, Botswana.

Jim holds a B.A. in Economics and Politics from Yale University. He was a Special Student at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the Urban Studies Department, and received a joint Masters in Public Affairs (MPA) and a Masters in Urban and Regional Planning (MURP) from the Woodrow Wilson School, Princeton University. Jim was past Chairman of the Strategic Leadership Forum, a Board Member of the National Kidney Foundation of Illinois, a past Member of the Board of Directors for the University Club of Chicago, Treasurer of LaSalle Language Academy and Member of the Admissions Committee for the Latin School of Chicago.

Peter S. Fader is the Frances and Pei-Yuan Chia Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. His expertise centers around the analysis of behavioral data to understand and forecast customer shopping/purchasing activities. He works with firms from a wide range of industries, such as telecommunications, financial services, gaming/entertainment, retailing, and pharmaceuticals. Managerial applications focus on topics such as customer relationship management, lifetime value of the customer, and sales forecasting for new products. Much of his research highlights the consistent (but often surprising) behavioral patterns that exist across these industries and other seemingly different domains.

In addition to his various roles and responsibilities at Wharton, Professor Fader co-founded a predictive analytics firm (Zodiac) in 2015, which was sold to Nike in 2018. He then co-founded (and continues to run) Theta Equity Partners to commercialize his more recent work on “customer-based corporate valuation.”

Fader is the author of Customer Centricity: Focus on the Right Customers for Strategic Advantage and coauthor with Sarah E. Toms of the book The Customer Centricity Playbook. He has been quoted or featured in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Washington Post, and on NPR, among other media. In 2017, Advertising Age named Professor Fader as one of its inaugural “25 Marketing Technology Trailblazers,” and was the only academic on the list.

Kathy Pearson is a strategist, systems thinking expert, and authority in decision making. She is president and founder of Enterprise Learning Solutions, an adjunct senior fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, and has served as an adjunct associate professor in the Operations, Information and Decisions Department at the Wharton School, both at the University of Pennsylvania. An award-winning educator, Kathy works extensively with mid- to senior-level executives, including high potentials and executive teams, teaching on a variety of topics including critical thinking, strategic agility, change management, and strategic execution. Kathy received her BS degree in theoretical mathematics from Auburn University, her MS degree in decision sciences from Georgia State University, and her PhD in industrial engineering (concentration in statistics) from Northwestern University.

Gregory P. Shea, Ph.D., consults, teaches, researches, and writes in the areas of organizational and individual change, leadership, group effectiveness, and conflict resolution. He is a Senior Fellow at the Wharton School’s Center for Leadership and Change, Adjunct Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and of its Aresty Institute of Executive Education, Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics at the Wharton School, President of Shea & Associates, Inc, Senior Consultant at the Center for Applied Research, and a principal in the Coxe Group, an international consulting firm serving the design professions. He served as Academic Director for the Johnson and Johnson/Wharton Program for Health System CEO’s and for fourteen years as Academic Director for the Johnson and Johnson/Wharton Fellows Program for Nurse Executives. His awards include an Excellence in Teaching Award from Wharton. He is a member of the Academy of Management and the American Psychological Association.

He has co-authored We Can Fix Healthcare: The Future Is Now (2016), Leading Successful Change: 8 Keys to Making Change Work (2013), Your Job Survival Guide: A Manual for Thriving in Change (2009), American Healthcare & the Consumer Experience (2005), and The Phantom Stethoscope: A Field Manual for Finding an Optimistic Future in Medicine (1999) and has contributed chapters to the following books: Business Management for the Curious: Why Study Business Management (2015), Strategic Thinking and Entrepreneurial Action in Health Care (2007), Medicine and Business (2000), Handbook of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (2nd edition; 1992), Managing Hospitals (1991), and Research in Personnel and Human Resource Management (Volume 5; 1987). Dr. Shea's writing has appeared in the Sloan Management Review, Journal of Applied Management, Journal of Applied Behavior Science, Journal of Conflict Resolution, British Journal of Social Psychology, Journal of Management Development, Healthcare Transformation, Nursing Administration Quarterly, Annals of Surgery, and School Administrator. He serves as Associate Editor of Healthcare Transformation and has also served as contributing editor to the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science and as a reviewer for Group and Organization Management, Journal of Applied Psychology, Management Decision, Personnel Psychology, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Psychology Bulletin, and the American Journal of Medical Quality.

Dr. Shea is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Harvard College and holds an M.Sc. in Management Studies from the London School of Economics and an M.A., M. Phil., and Ph.D. in Administrative Science from Yale University. His website is http://gregoryshea.com/.

Harbir Singh is the Mack Professor of Management, co-director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, and faculty director of the Huntsman Program for International Studies and Business at the Wharton School. Committed to global business research and education, he has served as vice dean for Global Initiatives at the Wharton School. He focuses on the development of world-class capabilities and of sustainable competitive advantage. His main interests in research and teaching lie in three areas: strategic leadership, growth and innovation via alliances and acquisitions, and the evolution of competitive strategy.

Harbir has won multiple awards for outstanding research in strategic management at the Academy of Management in addition to awards for teaching. He received the Academy of International Business Decade Award for his co-authored work on determinants of modes of entry by multinational firms into new country markets. He was chair of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management and is the former dean of the fellows of the Strategic Management Society. He is the author of several books on strategy and leadership in a global setting.

Harbir received his PhD at the University of Michigan. He is the academic director for several of Wharton’s open enrollment executive programs, including Creating and Implementing Strategy for Competitive Advantage and Driving Growth through Strategic Partnerships, and is a lead faculty member in the Mergers and Acquisitions program. Additionally, he teaches and directs numerous customized programs for companies and associations around the world.

Harbir has been a visiting faculty member at London Business School; Bocconi University in Milan; and the University of St. Gallen, Switzerland, as well as a founding faculty member of the Indian School of Business. He has also conducted executive seminars on competitive advantage, globalization, acquisitions, and alliances for many companies including IBM Corporation, Pfizer, Verizon, AT&T, and Daimler.

David Wessels is an Adjunct Professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Named by BusinessWeek as one of the nation’s top business school instructors, David teaches courses on corporate valuation, investment banking, and venture capital to undergraduates, MBAs, and executives in Philadelphia and San Francisco. He has been recognized by his students with the school's top MBA teaching award, and recognized nationally for his research on organizational structure and financial performance. His book, Valuation: Measuring and Managing the Value of Companies, co-authored with McKinsey & Company partners Tim Koller and Marc Goedhart, is a standard text for corporate valuation and performance management.

In addition to his teaching on campus, Professor Wessels serves on the executive development and training faculties at Bank of America/Merrill Lynch, Boston Scientific, BP, Deloitte & Touche, The Estée Lauder Companies, Home Depot, Google, IBM, Lockheed Martin, McKinsey & Company, Medco Health Solutions, MetLife, Microsoft, Philips, Santander, Unisys, and UPS. He has also served as an advisor to the United States in WTO trade disputes regarding valuation and value creation.

Before joining Wharton, David served on finance faculty of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Prior to Emory, he was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company and a technology analyst for Boston-based Harbourvest Venture Partners. David holds a Ph.D. in finance from the Anderson School at UCLA, a B.S. in economics and a B.A.S in computer science from the University of Pennsylvania.