Spotlights ~ Doctor of Management Program
**Dr. Chris Walach '12, Dr. Dominique Bouet '09, Dr. Ben Litalien '12, and Dr. Garthen Leslie '12**
Chris Walach, DM'12
chris.walach@nias-uas.com
Chris Walach DM'12, was recruited by the Nevada Governor’s Office of Economic Development; Chris Walach fills the key position of Director of Operations for the Nevada Institute for Autonomous Systems (NIAS). This non-profit works on behalf of the Governor’s Office of Economic Development. NIAS helps to grow the Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) Industry through business teaming, partnerships, research and development, and education awareness in order to bring in business and jobs to the State of Nevada. NIAS plans UAS flight missions, collects Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and NASA mission data, develops UAS airspace measures, and recommends lessons learned to the FAA and NASA in order to facilitate full and safe UAS integration into the National Airspace (NAS) by February 2017. The NIAS also grows Nevada UAS focused businesses as well as other UAS industry support businesses; shares UAS knowledge and lessons learned throughout the Nevada UAS community; conducts original R & D or promotes it with stakeholders; and helps to develop business opportunities in Nevada and abroad. The NIAS seeks to anchor the UAS industry growth to innovative research and development across all industries and disciplines. The endstate of NIAS is to keep the business process simple, agile, and highly resilient to help grow the Nevada UAS industry. The NIAS enhances the UAS Industry reality that Nevada is the location of choice for startups and established businesses and their future growth. NIAS also helps reduce barriers to business growth, creates a safe airspace environment, and positions Nevada as the premier UAS industry choice for innovative research and development and full operational integration into the NAS with other manned airspace users. His University of Maryland University College research focused on how to develop resilience in individuals, teams, and organizations.
Chris Walach’s UMUC dissertation research about resilience and his experience as a senior U.S. Army Officer was well suited to bring the field of resilience and leadership into the explosive growth area of the commercial Nevada UAS Industry, across the U.S., and abroad.
Dominique Bouet, DM'09
dominique.bouet@esc-pau.fr
Dr. Dominique Bouet (DM'09) examined the effects of Intellectual Property protection policies on innovation, and focused on the pharmaceutical industry in India for her doctorate. This enabled Dr. Bouet to continue the international relationships in my current profession as a professor of management.
Dr. Bouet is now at ESC-Pau business school in southern France. She works with the France-India MBA which gives her the opportunity to develop “business projects”. French and Indian students spend 4 months in India and work on cutting-edge missions for major companies like EY, Lafarge, Decathlon, Airbus, Schneider, Reliance, JSoft etc, some of them for many years now. The pedagogy is based on learning by doing, T-shaped competencies development, soft skills as well in depth academic competencies, methodologies and tools, etc. Missions include brand repositioning, cultural differences management, methodologies’ development, digital strategy, audit, etc. Executives from companies support each team, and provide constructive but uncompromising feedback.
Dr. Bouet moved to the USA from France for several years with her husband and three children. She says, "Being part of the doctoral program was a great opportunity to increase my academic knowledge while staying strongly connected to business, and to share with my cohort members and my professors-- bringing in the French perspective. This was a very interesting learning experience that went far beyond the classroom."
Dr. Bouet's background is in Information System. She took a Master in Software computing (1986) and a MBA (1996). Before earning her doctoral degree at UMUC, she had 17 years’ working experience with a number of global companies (Informix, Bull and Cap Gemini) on strategy and implementation of large-scale information systems including a position as a CIO of a major French agro-food company. She then joined a French business school as a professor of management. Dr. Bouet, along with the DM Program, is pleased that her doctoral research resulted in a recent article: Bouet, D. (2015). A study of intellectual property protection policies and innovation in the Indian pharmaceutical industry and beyond. Technovation, 38, 31-41
Garthen Leslie, DM '12
Doctor of Management shows his inventing prowess! For years, the 60-year-old Columbia resident has been trying to sell his inventions: a skateboard with an odometer and a speedometer, a sensory-equipped life vest for toddlers, and more. He was selling them all, but nobody was buying. Until last fall, that is, when his proposal for a "smart" window air conditioner won rave reviews from Quirky, a five-year-old New York City-based company whose stated mission is to "make inventions accessible.”
The idea was born last year, when Leslie was driving through Northwest Washington and noticed a profusion of air conditioning units sprouting from apartment windows. He thought, “Wow, those things must be running all day long, and must be costing people a lot of money”, he recalled. He started thinking, “You know there are smart phones that al-low you to control a lot of things. Why couldn't I control that air conditioner with my smart phone?' "
Now, six months later and with the help of Quirky and General Electric, Garthen's air conditioner has hit the market. He has made a splash in the world of everyman inventors, appearing on the CBS News Sunday Morning show and elsewhere in the media. It's left the unassuming Garthen, a former chief information officer for the Columbia Association, "tickled to death," as he put it.
Dr. Leslie is a Senior IT Management Executive with extensive expertise in application develop-ment, IT consulting, infrastructure development, professional services, enterprise project management, storage management and implementation, global technical support, data center management and systems and desktop support. He is an accomplished leader and manager of diverse workforces (local, national, and international). He has managed IT operations with proven strategic and bottom line successes in leveraging technical human capital, advanced hardware and software, and process improvement methodologies. As a director level executive at Johnson Controls, Teksystems, Fannie Mae and IBM, he has achieved superior outcomes in technology improvements. He is a senior level IT policy advisor and significantly influenced bottom line business results at these highly respected organizations.
See Dr. Leslie’s National TV commercial here.
Ben Litalien DM'12
ben@franchisewell.com
Dr. Ben Litalien (DM'12) continues to advance franchise education as a recognized global expert. Ben joined the Doctor of Management program with two decades of experience including running the U.S. franchise program for ExxonMobil. Ben focused his academic research on the social franchise (nonprofits engaging the franchise model in support of their mission). Ben created Franchise Well in 2009, a consulting practice that focuses on “franchising for the betterment of society”. He advises a broach spectrum of clients such as IKEA, RE/MAX and The UPS Store on how to improve their franchise activities. He also works with nonprofit organizations to educate them on the benefits of pursuing a franchise strategy. Currently, he has over a dozen nonprofit clients that own and operate franchises such as Link Staffing, Papa Murphy’s Pizza, College Hunks Hauling & Moving and Zerorez Carpet & Tile Cleaning.
Ben created the Certificate in Franchise Management program for the School of Continuing Studies at Georgetown University in 2007. This is the only comprehensive educational program in franchising recognized by the International Franchise Association Institute for Certified Franchise Executives (CFE). The program he developed at Georgetown features three 3-day sessions each semester and attracts attendees from across the country and around the world, and has graduated almost 1,000 students since its inception.
Advancing franchising education is at the core of Ben’s passion and expertise; he has participated in a variety of media programs dealing with this topic. In September 2015 he was featured on NPR on the Kojo Nnamdi show discussing the impact of a recent National Labor Relations Board ruling against McDonald’s (link: https://thekojonnamdishow.org/shows/2015-09-09/new-labor-law-ruling-affects-fast-food-workers). Ben also contributes a quarterly article to Franchise Asia magazine on global franchise topics and is collaborating with fellow scholars on franchise research.
“The UMUC DM Program was a game changer for me” says Ben, “it provided me with the academic foundation needed to augment my experience and become one of the only true scholar/practitioners in franchising on the planet”.