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 Julie Hennessy from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Before students even began describing the quality of their educational experiences with Julie Hennessy to mbaMission, they noted that she “cares a lot” and “makes herself available to chat and talk about recruiting.” In addition to teaching Kellogg MBA students as a clinical professor of marketing, Hennessy teaches executive education at leading firms, and she previously served as associate chair of Kellogg’s Marketing Department. Students we interviewed reported that she draws on her firm experiences in class but does not just tell stories. Instead, Hennessy challenges students and teases out the responses that facilitate learning. Students with whom we spoke also referred to her as “funny and energetic.”
Not surprisingly, then, Hennessy won the school’s L.G. Lavengood Outstanding Professor of the Year Award—which is voted on by Kellogg students—in both 2007 and 2017. In addition, she has won seven student impact awards and five Chair’s Core Course Teaching Awards—most recently in 2018 and 2010–2011, respectively. And in 2016, Hennessy received the school’s Certificate for Impact Teaching Award.
Kellogg’s website notes that Hennessy focuses her writing on producing new cases for class discussion; she has completed cases on such brands as TiVo, Apple iPod, Invisalign Orthodontics, and (as separate cases) the antibiotics Biaxin and Zithromax. Her recent cases have focused on such topics as “Stella Artois in South Africa: Cause Marketing and the Building of a Global Brand” and “With a Little Help from ‘Nuestros Amigos’: Hispanics and Kidney Transplants.”
For more information about Northwestern Kellogg and 16 other top-ranked business schools, check out our free mbaMission Insider’s Guides.