Media Coverage

At the inaugural BlackDoctor.org Community Voices in Health Equity Summit, Rabin Martin Partner, Terri Jackson moderated a panel discussion on Understanding the Provider/Patient Dynamics with Compassionomics Playing a Role. She was joined by Jeana Wirtenberg, Executive Director at the Rutgers Institute for Corporate Social Innovation, Michelle Anderson-Benjamin, Metastatic Breast Cancer Survivor and Certified Mental Health Coach and Trainer, Teresa Redmond, Director, US Oncology Pan Franchise Consumer Marketing at Merck, Bryan Buckley, Director, Health Equity Initiatives at NCQA and Assistant Professor in Medicine at Georgetown University School of Medicine, and Fatima Scipion, VP, Global Patient Affairs at Blueprint Medicines.

Video 35:56

“The RBSCryptoLab is a resource for the Blockchain Hub members, enabling Rutgers students to build, run, and maintain mining equipment,” said Professor Mark Guthner, leading the initiative at Rutgers. “In addition, it facilitates the learning process by merging theory with practice. Students learn how blockchains work and how decentralized networks perform their important functions. The RBSCryptoLab’s latest acquisition is the Apollo Bitcoin node and mining machines designed, manufactured, and sold by FutureBit.”

“This kind of stuff goes on regularly and generally has no lasting impact on companies — sentiment can change very quickly,” said Michael Barnett, professor of management and global business with a focus on corporate social responsibility, at Rutgers Business School. 

But he warned that while most boycotts ended in customers returning to their old routines, they had the potential to bring lasting consequences if they went on for “long enough to cause people to shift their buying patterns”.

“You might switch to something else that you find is a good substitute — it might be cheaper or something that you enjoy more, and you just establish a new habit.”

In addition to the creative collaboration with Newark School of Fashion and Design, the Office of Communications has also established a partnership with Rutgers Business School Marketing Professor Yla Eason, who is based on the Newark campus. She is renowned as the creator of Sun Man, the first African American superhero action figure and now resident of Mattel’s Masters of the Universe collection.

Undergraduate students enrolled in Eason's marketing class will play a central role in orchestrating the grand unveiling of the Scarlet Raider Fox.

“Professor Eason is a pioneering entrepreneur who broke new ground in multicultural marketing, creating characters with strong identities, first marketing them on her own and later through a major manufacturer. She is the perfect person to lead us in further imagining Rutgers-Newark’s new mascot,’’ said Kimberlee Williams, Rutgers-Newark Director of Communications and Marketing in the Office of Communications.

The jury is still out on whether remote work hobbles productivity, and working from home employees' contributions to a company's bottom line. Some reports say yes, some say no. Meanwhile, tech firms like Zoom and Apple are unveiling new systems that could be pitched as boosting remote workers' powers, such as meetings in virtual reality formats, which might make a digital meeting more like a face to face encounter.

What may be more true is that managing remote staff is actually hard, and requires managers to step up, learn new skills, and work harder. Terri R. Kurtzberg, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School, recently noted that it takes effort for a manager to figure out "How do I make sure that we have presence with each other, as a manager? [How do I] redesign my evaluation systems to not have to rely on this gut sense of, 'Oh, I know they work hard because I've seen it'? And that's an active role. It's not a passive role."

“These panelists and audience experts will represent various roles in the fact pattern and attempt to put the failing, half-built project on a path to completion,” said Zangari, a member of Sills Cummis and member of the Center for Real Estate’s executive committee.

“This discussion could not be better timed. In each real estate recession, restructuring experts work themselves out of a job by the end of the downturn — leaving a talent vacuum when the next recession happens.

“We’re at that point now,” he added. “Many of the professionals in commercial real estate and lending today were in high school or college during the last crisis 15 years ago, so there’s knowledge void. What better venue to fill that gap than the Rutgers Center for Real Estate?”

The program included a presentation by Richard Barkham, CBRE’s global chief economist, head of Global Research and head of Americas Research, who described the current global, regional and local economic climate. JLL Vice Chairman Robert Kossar also moderated a panel discussion of the challenges and opportunities the current economy presents for the state’s CRE industry. Participating in the conversation were Morris A. Davis, Rutgers Center for Real Estate; Will Irving, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy; and Otteau Group’s Jeffrey G. Otteau.

On Feb. 7 at the New Jersey Law Center in New Brunswick, leading figures in the sector will participate in a case-study program entitled: “Your Mixed-Use Redevelopment Project Is in Distress. Now What?”

The event, put on by the Rutgers Center for Real Estate, aims to provide insights for developers, lenders, investors, commercial real estate professionals and community leaders.

The event will feature a panel of experts playing various roles in a fictional case (that will hit home for many). The case was authored by Ted Zangari of Sills Cummis & Gross and George Jacobs of Jacobs Enterprises.

Infertility treatments aren’t cheap, with a single round of in vitro fertilization costing upwards of $20,000.

The good news is that the IRS says some of these expenses are tax deductible.

The bad news? The rules are hazy, and tax experts say it’s not always clear which procedures are tax deductible to which taxpayers. Some assisted reproductive technology procedures – especially those used by single men or LGBTQ+ couples – may be considered ineligible.

"Mostly wealthy clients are the ones who itemize their deductions,” said Jay Soled, director of Rutgers Masters in Taxation Program. For most taxpayers, “it's not going to mean anything.”

What’s working against these workers? Mainly, the fact that leaders are still trying to figure out how to manage workers who aren’t right in front of them, says Terri R. Kurtzberg, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School.

The apparent disadvantages for remote workers present an important challenge for employers managing these kinds of employees, Kurtzberg says. “Connection doesn’t happen unless you make it happen,” she says. “It takes effort to figure out: How do I make sure that we have presence with each other, as a manager? [How do I] redesign my evaluation systems to not have to rely on this gut sense of, ‘Oh, I know they work hard because I’ve seen it’? And that’s an active role. It’s not a passive role.”

"Technology played a role, but this was also a function of pent-up consumer demand and business needs to meet an age-old preference for the convenience of restaurant delivery," said Gary Minkoff, a professor of professional practice at Rutgers Business School in Newark and New Brunswick. "It just wasn’t something that was a focus for restaurants, for various operational reasons."

“The COVID-19 pandemic prompted a radical shift in how much people worked from home, which in turn boosted the productivity of working from home due to mass adoption of remote-work technologies,” said Morris Davis, the paper’s lead author. “The increase in productivity is predicted to lead to higher lifetime incomes for those workers in occupations with tasks that are most easily accomplished at home -- predominantly high-skill workers – and thus a side consequence of the increase in productivity of working at home is a widening of income inequality. The change in work-from-home productivity also increased the demand for housing, consistent with the increase in house prices we observed between 2020 and 2022.”

Stacy Schwartz, a marketing expert from Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, told Patch that many product crazes discovered “by accident” are short-lived without smart marketers who know how to harness the power of social media and build on previous successes in the market.

Stanley clearly has reined in something valuable.

“You … can’t ignore the importance of culturally relevant timing,” Schwartz said. “While the Stanley tumbler is a big craze right now, it was not the first metal water bottle to be viewed as a fashion accessory. Stanley benefits from the work that S’well, Yeti, Hydroflask, and other fashion-forward refillable water bottle brands have done to prepare the market for this moment.”

Lisa Kaplowitz
Executive director
Rutgers Center for Women in Business

The center aims to remove barriers, build community and empower women with the confidence and skills necessary to succeed as business leaders.

Morris Davis
Academic director
Rutgers Center for Real Estate Studies

The Rutgers Center has established itself as the preeminent real estate school in the state, thanks to Davis — an incentive to ensure the next generation of commercial real estate pros matches the diversity in our state.

[Miriam Brickman and her brother Buzzy Brickman] said they are facing a learning curve in running an eatery, but they’ve literally done their homework. Miriam was enrolled in an entrepreneurial program at Rutgers, where she was able to secure some seed money for the business. Buzzy, in his last semester as a business school and Honors College student studying business analytics and information technology, is folding the launch of Crunch Cafe into a class project.

Two of the world’s most vital shipping routes are currently compromised. Since November, the Panama Canal has had to reduce crossings by 40% due to a severe drought. More recently, the Suez Canal—which usually accommodates 30% of global containers—has become a battleground, as the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, have ramped up attacks on ships.

“They are separate issues, but the interaction between them certainly affects the logistics and transport on a global level,” says Arash Azadegan, department vice chair of Rutgers Business School who focuses on supply chain disruption.

When Panama alone was an issue, Suez could pick up the slack. “If you hurt your left arm, your right arm should be available to pick things up a little bit more,” Azadegan says.

Investment firms and funding organizations are being struck with complaints, and in some cases, federal lawsuits, over the constitutionality of financially supporting BIPOC (Black, indigenous, and other people of color) entrepreneurs.

Most recently, the American Alliance for Equal Rights — a conservative activist organization that opposes affirmative action — initiated a lawsuit against the Fearless Fund, which awards $20,000 Strivers Grants to Black women entrepreneurs. The suit claims that the Fearless Fund violates the Civil Rights Act’s prohibition of racial discrimination in business contracts because other races aren’t being considered for venture funding.

This new impediment to securing financing opportunities for BIPOC entrepreneurs is disconcerting. It’s made even more complicated by the alarming statistic that of the $214 billion in venture capital funding allocated in 2022, a slim 1.1% went to companies with minority founders. Plus, entrepreneurs of color who seek debt financing are still likely to be offered inferior loans, even when they’re stronger applicants than their white peers, according to the Journal of Marketing Research.

Confronted with these challenges, angel investors and investment groups that fund BIPOC entrepreneurs must remain committed to keeping vital early-stage capital flowing.

Two of the world’s most vital shipping routes are currently compromised. Since November, the Panama Canal has had to reduce crossings by 40% due to a severe drought. More recently, the Suez Canal—which usually accommodates 30% of global containers—has become a battleground, as the Houthis, a Yemeni rebel group, have ramped up attacks on ships.

“They are separate issues, but the interaction between them certainly affects the logistics and transport on a global level,” says Arash Azadegan, department vice chair of Rutgers Business School who focuses on supply chain disruption.

Stanley tumblers are filling our social media feeds and stories about the high demand for the popular quenches are dominating the news cycle. How did a water bottle manufactured by a company that has been around for more than 100 years become a cultural phenomenon? Stacy Schwartz, a marketing expert from Rutgers Business School-Newark and New Brunswick, talks about how a product becomes the item of the moment - and whether that is good for business.

Claudine Gay wraps herself in Harvard’s toga of integrity. It simply won’t work, not for herself nor for Harvard. Plagiarism allegations are serious, especially for an academic researcher — or for a president of a leading academic institution. The best she can do now is to leave gracefully, without excuses or explanations.

The law grants seasonal employers and those with six or fewer workers until 2026 to reach $15 an hour. Still, those employees' pay will increase by 80 cents next year, to $13.73.

“You want to cut them a little bit more slack so they can organize themselves a bit better, but they’re not exempt from the law,” said Parul Jain, who teaches finance and economics at Rutgers Business School.

Lisa Kaplowitz, executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, said women get stuck in “non-promotable work in the office, like note-taking, running the employee resource groups, taking on the emotional labor of the office, as the support role. Women are viewed as not as ambitious, which is just not true. Outside of the office, women still take on the majority of housework and child care at home.

“There’s the assumption that she doesn’t want the promotion, the assumption that she doesn’t want to travel, the assumption that she isn’t committed to her job. All of that is a false narrative,” Kaplowitz continued.

Morris Davis, the Paul V. Profeta Chair of Real Estate and the academic director of the center, said the night is made by the generosity of donors, including ICSC/Glenn and Mary Rufrano, the Hasan family, the Inspired Co., the Hampshire Cos. and the Wilf/Tanzman and Kokes families.

“The center awards so many scholarships thanks to the generosity of the advisory board, Leaders Council and the many supporters we have, and we are so grateful to them,” he said.

The scholarships are well-deserved, Davis said.

“This year, we have taught some of the strongest students in the program,” he said. “Several of the students participated in real estate case competitions and won or placed against large, well-known universities.”

Lei Lei, dean of Rutgers Business School, said the evening was special.

“The celebration of these scholarship recipients reflects the commitment of Rutgers Business School to reward excellent students,” she said. “It was heartwarming to see the appreciation the students and alumni had for the donors who work closely with the Center for Real Estate.”

On this episode of "Bloomberg Equality," Lisa Kaplowitz, finance professor at Rutgers University and the co-founder and executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, looks at how the coronavirus pandemic is affecting women in the financial-services industry. She speaks with Bloomberg's Haidi Stroud-Watts and Shery Ahn.

Financial analysts, like journalists, split their time between deskwork and roadwork: meeting executives, inspecting operations, tasting the local cuisine. Are these escapes into the outside world worth it?

In a new paper Azi Ben-Rephael of Rutgers University, Bruce Carlin of Rice University, Zhi Da of the University of Notre Dame and Ryan Israelsen of Michigan State University investigate the benefits of travel. They track 336 analysts of American stocks from 2017 to 2021, estimating the length of their office days from the time they spent logged in to their Bloomberg terminals. Analysts who did not log in during a workday were assumed to be traveling for work.

Logging off and getting out has some costs: peripatetic analysts issued fewer forecasts. But their stock recommendations made more of a splash, moving the market by more than their peers’ picks. They were also more likely to be rated as “star” analysts in the rankings published by Institutional Investor, a magazine.

Was this prestige deserved? Escaping from the office does, after all, give a stockpicker more time to schmooze with the institutional investors who contribute to rankings. And it fills their sleeves with more seductive tales to tell.

On the other hand, the paper shows that the forecasts of well-traveled analysts were also significantly more accurate than those of their peers.

Financial experts have concerns, especially as pandemic savings dwindle, and America’s collective credit card debt sits at a record $1 trillion.

“We’re creating a society of indebtedness,” said Marc Kalan, an associate professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School.

He looks at buy now, pay later as a much smaller-scale version of mortgaging a home, but for a secondary product, one that won’t gain value over time. Today’s consumer, however, often isn’t thinking long-term. If they were, he added, they would save up for these smaller purchases in advance.

“We are being trained for quick and instant gratification,” he said. Buy now, pay later “can make for short-term excitement. … I’m not sure how the feeling will be in the first quarter of ‘24 when the first payments are coming due.”

Parul Jain, who teaches finance and economics at Rutgers Business School, said tipping got a huge boost during the COVID-19 pandemic.

People used to tip on the basis of performance, she said. Now, the near ubiquitous use of touch screens at places where we'd never previously think of tipping applies enormous pressure.

"You feel guilt or misery," Jain said, adding that during COVID when many eateries were struggling, it was not uncommon to tip 30%.

In its questions to experts, MoneyGeek asked, Are there any drawbacks that businesses should be aware of when using balance transfer cards? "Businesses should keep meticulous records, so the owner(s) should look at the monthly and year-end reporting features of balance transfer cards and seek low-interest rates and attractive rewards programs," said John Longo, a distinguished professor of professional practice in finance at Rutgers Business School.

Some of the larger realities impacting food prices extend beyond the United States. The war in Ukraine as an example of factors abroad that hit consumers’ wallets more locally. Labor is also an issue. “The reality is that we still have a labor shortage,” Rutgers University finance and economics professor Arthur Guarino said Tuesday. “If there aren’t enough workers to pick the crops, farmers can miss out on delivering goods to market. Meanwhile, the cost of labor has shot up, as well.”

A single verdict, however, is not the last word on any issue, particularly in an industry as vast and profitable as real estate. “Somebody will overturn this, and it will go away,” said Morris A. Davis, the academic director of the Center for Real Estate at Rutgers Business School.

Seventy-five years of public policy coupled with a powerful real estate lobby have created an entrenched marketplace resistant to significant reforms, he said: “I just don’t see a world in which we’re willing to blow that up.”

Talent advisory firm DHR Global has appointed James Abruzzo as vice chairman. In this role, he will represent the firm while speaking at industry conferences and forums, provide search and consulting advice to clients, and mentor associates pursuing partner-level positions.

We’ve gotten to be a grab-and-go society. And Wawa has recognized that grab-and-go opportunity to build its business.

SOUNDS
The presidents of the US and China will meet in San Francisco, where the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit is taking place. It's the first time they will meet in a year. We look at what might come out of the event.

The US and the UK have announced new sanctions against four senior leaders and two financiers of Hamas. But how effective can sanctions be?

Professor Ajai Gaur at 16:00 into the podcast.

In reporting for this article, Francesca Paris talked to 16 researchers and medical professionals who study disability, long Covid, cognition and census data.

Before deeming certain days of the week in-office days, it might behoove leaders to check in with employees about their preferences, says Terri Kurtzberg, professor of management and global business at Rutgers Business School: "Sure, some people will feel unheard if they're outvoted, but it does seem better to find out directly whether there are unexpected preferences."

Kristina Durante, associate professor of marketing at Rutgers Business School in the US, says that when people feel stressed, they “retreat and go into survival mode, protecting resources to ensure their survival.”

Recognized for academic excellence, intellectual innovation, inspirational leadership, and embodiment of the intrinsic value of diversity, equity, and inclusion, Rutgers Business School is a force to be reckoned with in the national and global arenas. New Jersey is a great place to live and learn and with strong employment outcomes, Rutgers Business School has been consistently ranked one of the Best Undergraduate Business Schools in the U.S. by Poets & Quants.

But John Longo, the former chief investment officer of Beacon Trust and a professor at Rutgers Business School, told the News that the 60-40 model is not an appropriate benchmark to judge the performance of Yale’s endowment.

He noted that Yale’s peers all follow an alternative investment model, too.

“Performance over a one-year period is not meaningful for an institution like Yale which has a very long-term horizon,” he told the News. “Despite the somewhat disappointing short-term returns, in my opinion, Yale’s approach to managing its investment remains sound.”

Index funds are another newer way to build wealth — one that’s easier to get started with than it was in the 20th century.

“The index fund is undoubtedly one of the most important financial innovations in the past 100 years. Vanguard created the first index fund for individual investors in 1976, but its growth has dramatically accelerated since the early 2000s,” said John Longo, PhD, CFA, Beacon Trust’s chief investment officer and Rutgers distinguished professor of professional practice in finance and economics. “An investment in an index fund requires minimal time and effort, charges an exceptionally low fee and outperforms roughly 90% of active managers over the long run.”

While there are many great majors and career paths to choose from, most anyone in our profession will tell you that accounting is one solid choice. What makes it so?

1) Endless career options.
2) Endless industry options.
3) The opportunity to help people.
4) Work-life balance.
5) Good pay and benefits.
6) Skills that transfer to your personal life.
7) Learning an actual job skill in the classroom.
8) The CPA license itself.

In a new paper, Katic and her co-author, Jerry W. Kim of Rutgers Business School, investigate another strategy firms can use to achieve regulatory capture: incentivizing government regulators with offers of private-sector jobs.

“I come from a training in economic sociology, where we care a lot about networks,” Katic says. “I thought it would be really interesting to think about these networks being formed by people transitioning from public to private employment.”

Katic and Kim focused their analysis on government regulators who go on to join private firms as lobbyists, examining whether these individuals appear to help shorten the regulatory approval process for firms—either before or after they’re officially hired.

Nancy DiTomaso, Distinguished Professor at Rutgers Business School, points out that employers should offer “higher pay, better benefits, more stability of employment, and greater flexibility.” Meaningful, fairly compensated, and non-exploitative jobs are key for retaining a motivated workforce.

“Dynamic Engineering is a firm focused on helping to ensure that students studying real estate are prepared to join the workforce,” said Morris A. Davis, the Paul V. Profeta chair of real estate and academic director for the Rutgers Center for Real Estate. “We are gratified to be cooperating with such a committed firm and look forward to this engagement and the benefits to our students.”

Students with disabilities face both physical and attitudinal barriers when they go on a job search. Our colleague Mason Ameri of Rutgers Business School has been exploring which factors enable students with disabilities to become effective self-advocates, who are not afraid or reluctant to portray their strengths along with the types of accommodations they may need to work to their maximum potential. He will discuss these at the seminar next week.

Tell us more about the seminar.

Schur: It’s on Tuesday, October 24 at 12:00pm in Room 219 of the Levin Building on Livingston Campus. There’s also a Zoom option.
https://newbrunswick.rutgers.edu/event/rutgers-research-focus-advancing-disability-employment

We will have a one-hour presentation that includes short, five-minute summaries of six research projects we have been working on, including some of those referenced in this interview. It’s open to the public and the entire Rutgers community.

“It’s really a celebration of the history of the supply chain and procurement professions,” says Dr. Arash Azadegan, Ph.D., professor and vice chair of the Supply Chain Management Department at Rutgers Business School. “It started with a single realization. I was in Detroit at the Institute of Art, and they had an exhibit on the history of writing, and it showed the oldest human written thing that we have, written in cuneiform from Sumeria, and it’s a goods receipt. That’s literally the first record we have of human written communication anywhere on the planet. And it got me thinking.”

In the case of the Earn program, Gemini has displayed a troubling “lack of transparency” with customers, according to Tobey Karen Scharding, a professor at Rutgers Business School and expert on risk-related business ethics.

“The fact that they were withdrawing money suggested that they had significant worries either about Genesis or about crypto at this time, but they were, at the same time, encouraging their customers to make deposits and encouraging their customers to maintain a very positive attitude toward cryptocurrencies,” Scharding said. “That’s worrying.”

Some portions of Harvard’s endowment may still deliver strong performances. According to Rutgers Business School professor John M. Longo, HMC’s stock portfolio — which is heavily invested in technology companies — could boost its fiscal year 2023 returns.

“US stock market performance has largely been driven by a small group of large cap Technology oriented securities,” Longo wrote. “Harvard Management Company held three of these stocks (Meta, Alphabet, and NVIDIA) among its top 10 equity positions, so the equity segment of the HMC portfolio likely performed well this calendar year.”

As a professor who teaches finance and economics and a former investment banker and chief financial officer at some of the top firms in the world, you can be sure that Lisa Kaplowitz cheered the announcement that Claudia Goldin was the third woman to earn the Nobel Prize in economics — the first to do so as a solo winner.

And, as the co-founder and executive director of the Rutgers Center for Women in Business, you can be sure Kaplowitz is pleased that Goldin’s pioneering research on identifying drivers of gender differences in the labor market will bring more attention to the issue.

Kaplowitz’s biggest hope, however, is that the next generation won’t need such distinctions — or the research.

“I’m really looking forward to a time when her research is realized and we’re not talking about the fact that so-and-so is the first, because that means we have created pay equity, we have created equal representation and the biases have been removed from the system,” Kaplowitz said.

Rutgers-Newark Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor Jeffrey Robinson was named to the newly formed state Diversity Finance Advisory Board.

The board, formed by the New Jersey Economic Development Authority (NJDEA), will work to increase access to institutional capital for women- and minority-owned startups. It will also provide knowledge, guidance, and insights on ways to best increase capital, access, and investments in New Jersey’s diverse entrepreneurs.

Robinson, a Rutgers Business School professor, is an internationally known author and co-founder of the Center for Urban Entrepreneurship and Economic Development. He holds the Prudential Chair in Business and is a Professor of Management and Global Business at Rutgers Business School and specializes in management and entrepreneurship.

He has authored many articles and books in his areas of expertise, including the 2022 Harper Collins guide "Black Faces in High Places: 10 Strategic Actions for Black Professionals to Reach the Top and Stay There,'' co-authored with Rutgers alumnus Randall Pinkett.

“I am very pleased to serve on the state’s Diversity Finance Advisory Board. I have been working in this space for more than 15 years and it is great to see the State of New Jersey taking a leadership role to provide access to capital and resources for all of the state’s entrepreneurs,'' said Robinson.