new full-time faculty Brian Akins, Assistant Professor of Accounting
Brian Akins is an assistant professor of accounting at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University, and teaches financial accounting in the MBA for professionals program. His research focuses on financial reporting quality and the impact of accounting in debt and equity market settings. Dr. Akins earned his Ph.D. in accounting from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology this past May after defending his dissertation studying the relationship between reporting quality and uncertainty about credit risk, captured by disagreement between the rating agencies. He received a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of Texas at Austin. He also holds master’s degrees in business administration from Rice University and in biblical interpretation from Lubbock Christian University.
Kevin Crotty, Assistant Professor of Finance
Kevin Crotty is an assistant professor of finance at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. Prior to joining the faculty at Rice, he completed a Ph.D. in finance at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management. He teaches Financial Markets across all programs at the Jones School. His research focuses on empirical asset pricing, and he is particularly interested in the importance of market frictions for asset prices and financial market quality. Before pursuing his doctorate, he worked as an accountant at IBM. Dr. Crotty holds undergraduate and graduate degrees from the University of North Carolina.
David De Angelis, Assistant Professor of Finance
David De Angelis is an assistant professor of finance at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. He did his doctoral studies at the Johnson School at Cornell University and is currently teaching the managerial economics course in the MBA Full-Time program and in the MBA for Professionals (Evening) program. His research interests are in corporate finance and corporate governance. Dr. De Angelis has examined issues related to firms’ internal capital allocation decisions, the design of executive compensation contracts, and corporate risk management. He earned an M.S. in economics at the University of Montreal and a B.B.A. at HEC Montreal.
Otilia Obodaru, Assistant Professor of Management
Otilia Obodaru is an assistant professor of management in the Organizational Behavior group at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. She teaches the Leading People in Organizations undergraduate course, and her research interests include self-concept, identity, gender, careers, and counterfactual thinking. Dr. Obodaru’s research has been published in the Academy of Management Review and Harvard Business Review, and has been featured in media outlets such as Forbes and The Boston Globe. She received her Ph.D. and M.Sc., both in Organizational Behavior, from INSEAD and just finished a two-year post-doc at Harvard Business School and INSEAD. She earned her B.Sc. in International Business at the Academy of Economic Studies in Bucharest, Romania.
Anastasiya Zavyalova, Assistant Professor of Strategic Management
Anastasiya (Annie) Zavyalova is an assistant professor of strategic management at the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business at Rice University. Her research focuses on negative events in organizations, such as product recalls, on-campus murders in U.S. universities, child abuse scandals in the Catholic Church, and the role of information intermediaries in helping repair organizational reputation. In 2011 she was a recipient of a dissertation grant from the Center for Corporate Reputation at Oxford University. The first essay of her dissertation has been nominated for Best Paper for Practical Implications Award by the Strategic Management Society. Her empirical paper on toy recalls “Managing the message: The effects of firm actions and industry spillovers on media coverage following wrongdoing” is forthcoming at the Academy of Management Journal. Dr. Zavyalova has taught Social Entrepreneurship and Business Policies courses. She received her Ph.D. in strategic management from the University of Maryland, Robert H. Smith School of Business. business.rice.edu