Karen A. Brown is professor of Operations and Project Leadership at Thunderbird School of Global Management. She earned her BS, MBA, and Ph.D. in business from the University of Washington. At Thunderbird, she teaches MBA, EMBA, and corporate learning courses in operations management, project management, and supply chain management. Since 1999, she has served regularly as a visiting professor at the China-Europe International Business School (CEIBS) in Shanghai, Beijing, and Shenzhen. Karen has also taught at IESE in Barcelona, Spain; Seattle University; and the University of Washington.

Karen has been recognized on several occasions for excellence and innovation in teaching in graduate and undergraduate programs. In 1999 she was the recipient of the Decision Sciences Institute's Instructional Innovation Award for her service-learning-based project management course.

Karen's research is focused on socio-technical systems, the study of interactions between human and technical elements in the contexts of routine operations and unique projects. Her work has appeared in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, California Management Review, Journal of Operations Management, Interfaces, Project Management Journal, International Journal of Production Research, Human Relations, Journal of Applied Psychology, Business Horizons, Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education, and other scholarly and practitioner outlets. Her chapters on project management and business-process benchmarking were published by McGraw-Hill as part of the Melnyk and Swink modular series Value-Driven Operations Management. She also has co-authored teaching cases for Harvard Business School, Thunderbird, and the European Case Clearinghouse. Karen has been an associate editor of the Journal of Operations Management since 1994 and has served on the editorial review boards of Academy of Management Journal and Decision Sciences Journal.

In addition to her role as a faculty member, Karen has consulted and led seminars for numerous private, non-profit and public-sector organizations, including Boeing, Puget Sound Naval Shipyard, PACCAR, Maersk, ABB, Emerson Electric, Eli Lily, Sony, Shanghai Media Group, Shanghai Stock Exchange, and Sihuan Pharmaceuticals, Habitat for Humanity, and the Peace Corps.

Nancy Lea Hyer is associate professor at Vanderbilt University's Owen Graduate School of Management. Nancy earned her MBA and Ph.D. in business from Indiana University and holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Richmond. At Owen, Nancy teaches executive, MBA, and EMBA classes focused on project management, process development and improvement, and team leadership and facilitation. Nancy has also taught at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. She has won executive program, Executive MBA, and MBA teaching awards, and both school and university-wide awards for excellence in undergraduate education.

Before joining Vanderbilt, Nancy was operations research manager at Hewlett-Packard's Network Measurements Division. In that capacity she was a project manager responsible for leading teams focused on operational and strategic improvement.

Nancy's research focuses on lean processes and project management. Her publications have appeared in Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Decision Sciences, IIE Solutions, Journal of Operations Management, Business Horizons, International Journal of Production Research, Manufacturing Engineering, and other scholarly and practitioner outlets. She is the co-author (with Urban Wemmerlöv) of Reorganizing the Factory: Competing through Cellular Manufacturing, which was awarded a 2003 Shingo Prize for "outstanding contribution to the body of knowledge in the field of manufacturing excellence." She serves on the editorial review boards of Decision Sciences Journal of Innovative Education and Production & Inventory Management Journal.

In addition to her corporate experience as a project manager at Hewlett-Packard, Nancy has worked with a number of organizations to provide focused project management and process improvement training and to create and lead strategic planning sessions, retreats, and retrospectives. Recent clients include Community Health Systems, Commerce Bank, Provident Bank, Compaq, Hewlett-Packard, WebMD, Cheekwood Botanical Gardens and Museum, Cigna, and RR Donnelley.

Together, Karen and Nancy have co-authored several articles, jointly delivered presentations at academic and practitioner meetings, and team-taught highly successful Vanderbilt executive programs.