Certificate in Leadership: Faculty
Paula K. Strasser is director of the Cox Business Leadership Center, adjunct professor in the Management and Organizations Department and a leadership consultant to various organizations. She was director of international training and development and director of communications for Pearle Inc. and served as the director of Pearle Eye Care University. Before her positions at Pearle, Strasser was director of training and assistant vice president for two major bank holding companies, educational therapist for a psychological academic center and personnel manager at the University of Kansas. She received a master's degree in educational administration with an emphasis in human resources management and psychology from the University of Kansas.
Jon E. Porter, is president and founder of PorterPro LLC, which provides sales and marketing consulting to technology companies. Before founding the company, he held numerous field sales, national account management, sales management and senior sales and marketing positions. For 14 years, Porter headed sales and marketing training at Verizon (GTE). He has also worked with many domestic and international sales organizations to develop new skills and capabilities in dealing with complex sales issues. Porter is a member of the Professional Society for Sales and Marketing Training, a seminar leader for the American Management Association and a trustee of the Marketing Science Institute in Boston. Porter holds a bachelor of science degree in political science from the University of Houston.
Jerry E. Magar is director of performance improvement at SMU and an adjunct faculty member for the Cox School of Business, where he teaches organizational development and change. As lead faculty for several SMU Executive Education leadership-development programs, he works with numerous oil and gas clients, including Merit Energy, Pioneer Natural Resources and Spectra Energy. Magar has more than 20 years of experience in individual and organizational consulting. In addition to his role at SMU, he’s a founding partner of People Systems Consulting Group, where he works with clients of all sizes, including Dell Computer, JP Morgan Chase, Lucent Technologies, Shell Oil and Southwest Airlines. His areas of experience include leadership development, strategic planning, interpersonal communications, change management, marketing, public relations and business development. Magar holds certification and master certification for more than 25 programs and assessment instruments and has certified hundreds of trainers and educators across North America. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in speech communication from Texas A&M University.
Ulrike Schultze is associate professor of information technologies and operations management. She teaches systems analysis and design, business process consulting, electronic commerce and IT implementation at the undergraduate and graduate level. Ulrike's research focuses on the impact of information technology on work practices, with a special focus on unintended consequences of technologies, including knowledge management and Internet-based self-serve technologies. She typically relies on ethnographic research methods to gain gain an in-depth understanding of a technology's impact on an organization. Shultze’s research has been published in “MIS Quarterly,” “Information Systems Research,” “Information & Organization” and other journals. She completed her undergraduate and master's level work at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, and holds a doctor of philosophy degree in management information systems from Case Western Reserve University.
