Many MBA applicants feel that they are purchasing a brand when they choose a business school. However, the educational experience you will have is what is crucial to your future, and no one will affect your education more than your professors. Today, we focus on Sanjay Sood from the UCLA Anderson School of Management.
Sanjay Sood is a professor of marketing and behavioral decision making and was formerly the faculty director of UCLA Anderson’s Center for Management of Enterprise in Media, Entertainment, and Sports, which he helped develop. Sood focuses on marketing management, brand management, advertising, and consumer behavior, and he is a strong believer in incorporating the real business world in the classroom experience. Indeed, he often welcomes executives from such companies as Google and MGM Resorts International as speakers, and he takes students on field trips to other companies. One second-year student we interviewed said Sood brings “a lot of practical experience to the classroom” and uses connections from his work with Procter & Gamble to enhance his classes.
Sood received his PhD in marketing from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 1999 and was later recognized as a Marketing Science Institute Young Marketing Scholar in 2003. In 2010, Sood was selected by his fellow faculty members to receive the school’s Niedorf “Decade” Teaching Award, which is presented to professors who exhibit “exemplary teaching over a period of seven to ten years.” Five years earlier, he received a Citibank Teaching Award, which was also determined by his fellow faculty members.
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