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Pepperdine Welcomes New Faculty

Graziadio School of Business and Management

John Buckingham, practitioner faculty, teaches marketing and strategy from decades of knowledge as a senior executive with numerous and diverse companies that have successfully negotiated reengineering, turnaround, or start-up situations. He has hands-on operations, marketing, product development, and direct sales experience for industrial, high tech, and service product lines. Buckingham has been adjunct professor at both Pepperdine and UC Irvine since 2003. He was chancellor and president of Brooks College in Long Beach during a period when electronic learning and distance education programs were first developed.

John Durand, practitioner faculty. B.S.M., MBA, Pepperdine University. Durand has been lecturing for courses in the Fully Employed MBA program and the B.S.M. program which are part of the core curriculum: presentations focus on production and service delivery processes, information requirements, and the critical role of information systems. He is president and CEO of SUMMA Marketing, Inc. an agency providing marketing, creative, and technical services to growing and start-up businesses (currently managing more than 65 clients with diverse business models).

John R. Folkeson, Jr., practitioner faculty, teaches decision science to undergraduates and MBA students. He retired as a senior analyst with the Management Sciences Department at RAND Corporation. His research as a member of the RAND Arroyo Center’s Military Logistics Program was in logistics process improvement, information system modernization, force projection sustainment, managing the implementation of change, and workload planning. Folkeson retired from the U.S. Air Force where he served as a logistics analyst with the Air Force Center for Studies and Analyses, the faculty of the Air Force Institute of Technology, and numerous logistics management assignments. Folkeson graduated from The Pennsylvania State University and entered military service. The Air Force sponsored an MBA from the University of Missouri, and later a Ph.D. in production and logistics management from the University of Houston.

Ron D. Ford, director of executive education. B.S. (business administration), University of Tennessee; M.B.A., Vanderbilt University; Ph.D. (executive management), Case Western Reserve University (dissertation: The Marketplace of Management Ideas). Ford has executive experience in several industries: Wells Real Estate Funds (where he functioned as CFO); OneCoast Network (where he served as president); Media Arts Group (as CEO and president); and other senior-level roles in printing and publishing as well as with a private equity firm. He is CEO of St. Clair Entertainment, America’s leading independent provider of video and audio entertainment, based in Los Angeles. His career focus is on performance in business-to-business and business-to-consumer products and services.

Maretno Agus Harjoto (Augus), assistant professor of finance. Ph.D. (economics), University of Kentucky. Prior to joining GSBM in 2007, Harjoto served on the faculty at San Jose State University in finance, where he received the Dean’s Academic Research Award, the Graduate Teaching Award, and an early promotion to associate professor. Harjoto also received the Jentz Fellowship Award from the Graduate School of Banking Colorado. His banking area of expertise is asset and liability management. He has published 14 refereed research papers in both academic and practitioner journals such as Financial Management, Journal of Financial Research, Journal of Corporate Finance, Financial Review, Journal of Financial Education, and Commercial Lending Review. His work on whisper number has received media coverage by BusinessWeek and CFO Online magazines.

H. Lynn Newman, practitioner faculty. B.A. (communications), Michigan State University; M.S. (counseling psychology), University of Michigan; Ph.D., School of Business Administration, USC. Newman has worked as an organization consultant in private practice with a number of major long-term clients; is licensed as a marriage and family therapist; has been facilitator, instructor, and lecturer in programs for business administration (at USC), for executive education (at University of Michigan and at the Harvard Business School), and for organizational studies (at Alliant International University). She has publications in the areas of organizational change and action research continuum.

Abraham Park, assistant professor of finance.  B.A. (economics), UC Berkeley; M.P.P., Harvard University; J.D., UC Berkeley; Ph.D. (real estate finance) Cambridge University (dissertation: Corporate Strategy, Real Estate Finance and Organizational Form). Park worked with Cambridge undergraduates on research methods and in tutorials on statistics. He ranked second in his M.Phil. class at Cambridge. He has been admitted to the Massachusetts Bar (1994) and the California Bar (1997). His areas of experience in business include world-class firms like IPD, HSBC, the British Library, Grosvenor Group (a global firm), and Standard Chartered Bank (largest listed firm in real estate worldwide). He was a top manager for a Silicon Valley company during the tech boom; has done hedge fund analysis, and business and insurance litigation; and consulted widely for international corporations.