Alumni Notes, Spring 2021
Alumni Notes, Spring 2021
1990s
Ellen Magnis, BA’96, MBA’98, is the president and CEO of Family Gateway, a Dallas nonprofit whose mission is to provide stability and life-changing supportive services to children and families affected by homelessness. Ellen was pleased that Family Gateway was the only Texas recipient of a Bezos Day 1 Families Fund Leadership Award in 2019. The Day 1 Families Fund supports organizations that are “moving the needle on family homelessness,” she says. The award includes a $2.75 million grant to expand prevention efforts to help Dallas-area families remain stabilized and avoid needing shelter. The money also goes to a pilot program that provides first-time homeless families with short-term deposit and rental assistance for rapid shelter exits, and to pay for hotel stays for families with children when area shelters are full, particularly during periods of inclement weather.
Before joining Family Gateway in 2016, Ellen was the interim executive director for the nonprofit Minds Matter. Prior to that, she was the chief of external affairs at the Dallas Children’s Advocacy Center for 81⁄2 years. She started her nonprofit career at the National Center of the American Heart Association (2000-2007), where she held positions as vice president of healthcare quality, vice president of strategic alliances and health IT and vice president of the American Stroke Association.
Prior to these positions, she was CEO of Health IT (1998-2000), where she developed a business plan with the company founder during her MBA internship, following which she was offered the opportunity to start the company.
2010s
Robert H. Lane, MS’11, joined the Children’s Mercy pediatric healthcare system as executive vice president and physician-in-chief in January 2020. Rob earned his undergraduate degree and medical degree at the University of Notre Dame and Northwestern University Medical School, respectively. He then did a Neonatal – Perinatal Medicine Fellowship. His clinical training occurred in the Northwestern University Medical School system, and his research training was performed at the University of Chicago under the aegis of the Pediatric Scientist Training Program, which is an NIH-sponsored program.
Rob most recently served Children’s Wisconsin Hospital as Chair of Pediatrics and pediatrician in chief from 2013 to 2020. During his career, he has received National Institutes of Health funding multiple times and served as president of the International Perinatal Research Society and the United States Developmental Origin of Health and Disease Society. Rob has a reputation as a holistic leader – not only focused on improving outcomes and metrics, but equally committed to fostering a work environment where physicians, faculty and staff are challenged, respected and engaged.
Meng Li, PhD’13, earned tenure from Rutgers University and is now an associate professor of operations management there. At Rutgers since 2016, Meng last year earned a Research Council Award from the university. The awards are based on peer review of faculty requests to fund research and other scholarly and creative activities. His other recent awards include second place in the 2019 Junior Faculty Interest Group Paper Competition of INFORMS and the Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Research and Creative Activity. His research interests include artificial intelligence and platform operations. He serves as a senior editor at Production and Operations Management and is an associate editor at Decision Sciences Journal.
Varun Gupta, MS’14, MBA’14, PhD’14, has earned tenure from Penn State University and is an associate professor of supply chain management and analytics in the Project and Supply Management and MBA programs at Penn State’s Behrend campus in Erie. Varun’s research interests lie in choice modeling, revenue and inventory management, supply chain management and empirical operations management. He collaborated with fellow JSOM PhD graduate Sandun Perera, MBA’14, PhD’15, now an assistant professor of business analytics and operations at the University of Nevada, Reno on a study, “Management of Online Server Congestion Using Optimal Demand Throttling,” which was published last year in the European Journal of Operational Research.
Joshua Castille, MS’18, was honored at The Institute of Internal Auditors International Conference last November for earning the highest score of any student who took the Certified Internal Auditor exam in 2019.
“They did not give me [my] score,” Joshua said about exam results. What he knows is that “the technical achievement was [that] I scored the highest score on the CIA exam when compared to all full-time students who passed all three parts on the first try.”
According to the IIA, 8,162 individuals globally earned the CIA in 2019.
Also a certified public accountant, Joshua is a member of the Dallas chapter of IIA and a senior associate in Risk Advisory Services in the Dallas office of Weaver, a public accounting and advisory firm. He joined Weaver as an intern in August 2017 and earned the Rookie of the Year Award from the Risk Advisory Services team in 2019. He now focuses on internal audit services, including analysis and documentation of key processes and internal controls.
In a video in which he accepted the award, Joshua thanked his fiancé, and he thanked Joseph Mauriello, director of the JSOM Center for Internal Auditing Excellence.
Read the full story on Inside Jindal School, the JSOM news center, at https://jindal.utdallas.edu/news/alum-recognized-for-highest-score-on-certification-exam.
Vicky Eaglebear, EMBA’18, became the program director of the Partnerships for Accessible Counseling and Training (PACT) at the Center of Integrative Counseling and Psychology in Dallas in 2020.
Established in 2014, PACT has grown to more than 10 nonprofit partners in 12 locations throughout North Texas. It teams up with nonprofits whose clients would not otherwise have access to mental healthcare and makes professional counseling and psychological assessments accessible to all. Even during the pandemic, the center was able to continue counseling for PACT clients through telecounseling, Vicky says.
“The journey to end the stigma surrounding mental health is crucial,” she wrote recently. “I’m grateful to facilitate a program that enables people to receive counseling that will instill them with hope and equip them with tools that will empower them to lead healthy fulfilling lives.” Usually, Vicky says, PACT provides counseling onsite, where people already receive services such as food, clothing and afterschool care. “We complement the work of these nonprofits by addressing an unmet need.”
Previously, Vicky was director of volunteer operations at the North Texas Food Bank and prior to that was an executive sales specialist for Owens.
In addition, she served in the Combat Aviation Brigade, 1st Armored Division of the U.S. Army from 2012 to 2014 at Fort Bliss in El Paso. Before this, she served three years as a maintenance platoon leader and later as an executive officer in South Korea.
Before her Army service, Vicky was director of marketing at The Avenues of Art and Design in West Hollywood, California.
At home, she enjoys spending time with her husband, Jeremy, and their two dogs, Max and Louise (Little Girl). Vicky also enjoys oil painting. Her animal portraits are displayed on https://victoriaeaglebear.com.
Daniel P. Howard, MBA’18, joined Dallas-based evolv consulting as a senior consultant in April. He was a Forbes 30 Under 30 nominee in the Finance Sector in 2020. Daniel previously worked for Irving-based consumer finance firm Cottonwood Financial as a project manager, San Antonio-based insurer and financial services firm USAA as a senior business intelligence manager, Capital One as a business analytics manager in the Auto Finance division, and at Citi, first as an IT business associate and later as an assistant vice president of strategy and analytics.
Aman Sharma, MS’18, has been an analyst at The Dallas Morning News since May 2019.
Part of a team that works on all levels of business analytics, his focus is on digital products. “I consume behavioral data for an average of 15 million monthly audience,” he writes, “and translate it into strategic recommendations for advertising, marketing, product teams and, most importantly, our newsroom — where I’ve helped in understanding how our content resonates with the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolis using data science algorithms.”
Aman adds that his work “has garnered great interest from journalists who now have access to how they influence the business.” For his contributions across these teams, he was recognized with a 2020 A.H. Belo Core Value Employee for Innovation award, a recognition for 10 employees across the organization.
One JSOM course that “greatly helped” him, Aman says, was Data Visualization (MIS 6380), which he took from Dr. Judd Bradbury. “It allowed me to translate data science into practical business insights, and I can’t recommend it enough,”
Aman earned his undergraduate degree in engineering from Delhi College of Engineering.
Larissa Hagge, BS’19, is a manager in training for Parallon, which offers business services, specifically revenue cycle solutions for hospitals, physicians and healthcare systems. She says UTD “gave me the tools to complete my education and prepared me to enter the market.”
Previously, Larissa worked as a certified pharmacy technician, at Medical City Dallas, from 2014 to 2016 and 2019 to 2020, and at CVS franchises, from 2014 to 2015 and from 2016 to 2020. She also completed a two-semester internship during this same time, with Baylor Scott & White Health as a community advocate. And as a summer intern, she was a pharmaceutical sales rep for Eli Lilly & Co. She also was the vice president for the Healthcare Management Association, a UTD student organization, from 2018 to 2019.
Larissa enjoys her current position because it allows her to combine her two passions, healthcare and management. She recently said, “I have a goal of improving our healthcare system while also improving the lives of people who work with me — one patient at a time; one co-worker at a time.” She especially appreciated her alumni mentors, Fallon Wallace, MBA’15, and Salman Moti, MS’11 and MBA’16.
2020s
Olivier Dorian Boncoeur, PhD’21, is scheduled to join the faculty as an assistant professor of management and organization in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame this summer. Dorian will teach Principles of Management. His research interests lie in workplace well-being, emotions and diversity at work. In his spare time, Dorian likes to work out at UREC and run the Katy Trail. In April, Dorian was named PhD Student of the Year at the 2021 Outstanding Worthy Leaders Involved Exceptionally (OWLIE) Awards.
Miranda J. Welbourne Eleázar, PhD’21, is scheduled to join the Tippie College of Business at the University of Iowa as an assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship this fall. Miranda, who earned the outstanding teaching assistant award from JSOM in fall 2019 and an honorable mention for the UT Dallas President’s Teaching Award for Teaching Assistants in 2019, will teach Entrepreneurial Strategy and Managing the Growth Business. She will continue her research on entrepreneurship and strategy, with a focus on how firms and entrepreneurs respond to crises and adversity. After earning her bachelor’s degree and a JD from the University of Michigan, she worked as an attorney for 10 years before coming to UT Dallas. She incorporates her professional perspective in her teaching and research, and is looking forward to bringing her skills and experience to the University of Iowa.