“What excites me most about the Master of Science in Management program is the inevitable knowledge collision between the HWS liberal arts core and the ‘traditional’ managerial skills of business,” Bizari says. “Technology minded management has dominated business in the U.S. over the past several decades; an HWS master’s in management, based on a strong liberal arts foundation, will increase the quality and quantity of graduates who are willing to make conscious, impactful, and socially minded decisions in the traditional business setting.”
Bizari is an entrepreneur based in Rochester, N.Y. with 30+ years experience at Fortune 500 companies, funded startups, and early stage startup companies. Areas of expertise included strategy development, product management, sales, and marketing. At HWS, Bizari plays a vital role in developing the Colleges’ entrepreneurial programming, advising students and supporting their projects, directing the Summer Sandbox Student Startup Accelerator, facilitating workshops and coordinating entrepreneurial events on and off campus.
Since 2013 he has been with Launch NY, an Upstate NY venture development firm that advises and funds early stage startup companies, serves on several startup boards, is a National Science Foundations I-Corps Short Course instructor, has taught entrepreneurship courses at University of Rochester and Ithaca College, and serves as a mentor in regional clean energy and food/agriculture economic development competitions. Ed holds an MBA and BSEE from the Rochester Institute of Technology.
Tom Drennen
Director of the Master of Science in Management Program, The Stine Family Endowed Chair in Business Management and Entrepreneurship, and Professor of Business Management and Entrepreneurship
Professor Drennen never took an economics course as an undergraduate, but the more he studied climate change, the more he understood that the best solutions would have to transcend engineering and science. Politics, history, international relations, sociology, economics — understanding how they all connect determines the most viable path forward.
The MSM program at HWS proceeds from the same idea: “empowering students to dive deep into serious, complex, interrelated issues and find solutions,” Drennen says. “Because technology will change in unrecognizable ways during their careers, we also want students to have meaningful leadership experience, foundational skills in finance and communications, and a practical understanding of how organizations adapt and evolve over time.”
An expert in energy use and climate change, Drennen has served as a senior economist for Sandia National Laboratories, where he developed techno-economic models examining the economic and environmental tradeoffs of alternative energy pathways, including alternative fuels such as ethanol and hydrogen. The author of Pathways to a Hydrogen Future, Drennen earned a Ph.D. in resource economics from Cornell University, an M.A. in public policy from the University of Minnesota and a Bachelor of Science in nuclear engineering from MIT. He is the recipient of the 2018 Senior Fellow Award from the United States Association for Energy Economics and the 2006 Faculty Award for Teaching from HWS.
Amy Forbes
Adjunct Professor
At the forefront of leadership education, Amy Forbes’ courses blend contemporary leadership theory and cutting-edge innovation concepts. In her classroom, students prepare to lead diverse teams, cultivate inclusive and innovative cultures, and tackle significant challenges in organizational environments.
A practitioner of the Adaptive Leadership framework, an emerging model designed by faculty at Harvard University, Forbes says, “With increasing complexities and rapidly changing environments, this framework is useful toward helping leaders differentiate between technical and adaptive challenges, to diagnose the system, and see where they can leverage innovative solutions that might otherwise not be possible.”
Forbes holds a doctorate with a focus in educational leadership and policy studies from the University of Vermont. “Leadership as a field spoke to me largely because it plays host to so many interesting disciplines and it truly is where the action takes place,” she says. “I like the challenge of pursuing a craft where there’s no mastery, only continuous, lifelong learning to be the best version of yourself when you are an organizational leader.”
Forbes has presented on numerous topics including authentic leadership, ethical decision-making, group dynamics, organizational change, problem solving and innovation. Her areas of interest are leadership studies, leadership development, college student leadership, organizational development, and entrepreneurial leadership.
Robinson Murphy
Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies
The HWS M.S.M. program is grounded in an intellectual community that values ethical reasoning and decision-making, Robinson Murphy says. In his “Management Strategies for a Changing World” course, which Murphy co-teaches alongside Professor of Economics Thomas Drennen, students engage with topics at the intersection of economics, environmental ethics and critical race studies.
“Time and time again, I watch our students grow into impressive critical thinkers and experimental, fearless doers. I marvel at our students all the time. If anyone has it in them to love the world into being something better than it is, it’s them—I believe that. Our students are willing to get their hands dirty. They have both the brains and the brawn.”
With a background in the humanities, having earned his Ph.D. in literature from the University of Notre Dame, and expertise in environmental education, Murphy incorporates mixed media into his teaching, enlivening discussions about theory with film and art alongside print texts. In addition to teaching in the Environmental Studies Department, Murphy’s courses have been cross-listed in the Gender Studies Program. He also served as a Faculty Research Fellow in the Fisher Center for the Study of Gender and Justice.
Craig Talmage
Director of the Bozzuto Center, Chair of Business Management and Entrepreneurship, and Associate Professor of Business Management and Entrepreneurship
With a core research interest in the darker and grayer sides of entrepreneurship, Craig Talmage’s scholarship looks beyond traditional enterprise, often bringing seedier characters – from hacktivists to pirates – into his case studies. “I challenge students, scholars and practitioners to expand their perspectives on who is the entrepreneur, what is entrepreneurship, and what constitutes entrepreneurial success and failure,” Talmage says.
In his own journey through higher education, Talmage pivoted away from a traditional business school to join an interdisciplinary master’s program where he could apply industrial/organizational psychology to understand nonprofit and for-profit workplaces. He earned his Ph.D. in Community Resources and Development at Arizona State University and now teaches courses in local development, tourism development, organizational behavior/development, nonprofit management and leadership, and social entrepreneurship.
Talmage has more than ten years of combined not-for-profit, nonprofit and public sector research and leadership experience. Before becoming an educator, he founded and operated a research consulting practice for small businesses and nonprofits in Arizona. He also serves as the editor-in-chief of Community Development. At HWS, he serves as the faculty liaison for the Center for Community Engagement and Service Learning.
