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Katherine Richardson

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Management and Management Science Department

We caught up with Katherine Richardson, PhD—associate dean for graduate programs and professor in the Department of Management and Management Science—to reflect on her 15-year journey at ̨ÍåSWAGUniversity. She shared how her experience in accounting, finance, and marketing informs her teaching; why she’s passionate about employee well-being; and how her path from corporate life to the classroom led her to leadership at Lubin.

Why Management?

Management is about planning and organization. I’ve always been good at that, but it’s also about people and collaboration—working together to accomplish goals. We all bring different skills and abilities to an organization, and management includes harnessing that human capital to be most effective. I’m more of a micro person, focused on organizational behavior and human resource management.

Why Lubin/Pace?  

Lubin has a great location in New York City, which attracts students and faculty who want to be near the action. The city is full of energy, and so is our community. If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere!

What are your research interests/areas?

My research areas/interests are work–life balance and employee health and wellness, with an emphasis on how individuals cope with change and the related stress that may result from major life and career transitions.

Why is it important to advance research in this area or these areas?

Interest in employee health and well-being has certainly grown since the COVID-19 pandemic, and much of what we know about these topics has been built over 40-plus years of research. During the past decade, however, there’s been a significant shift in how employees work and communicate—fueled by the use of information and communications technology. It’s important to continue exploring how employees can manage workplace demands and find balance in a 24-hour connected society.

What do students learn in your classroom?  

In my Negotiations courses, students learn how to prepare and plan for a negotiation, how to advocate for themselves, and how to find collaborative solutions. These skills are helpful not just for salary negotiations, but also for situations like buying a car or renting an apartment. In my Training and Development class, I ask students to think about a future job they would like and they are tasked with building a plan to get there—what should they be doing now to acquire the knowledge, skills, and abilities they’ll need?

Discuss your professional path and its impact on how you teach and what you teach. How did you go from teaching to becoming Associate Dean?

My undergraduate degree was in accounting—and my first job was as an auditor with KPMG. I learned a lot and earned my Certified Public Accountant (CPA) credential, but I also realized I didn’t want to continue working in public accounting. I left KPMG and took a position with HBO as a financial analyst. The less demanding work hours gave me the opportunity to pursue a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree part-time while still working. I focused on marketing so I could broaden my skills beyond accounting and finance.

Midway through my MBA, I left HBO and went to work for the People magazine division of Time Inc. This was during the tail end of the glory days of print publishing, and that job was a lot of fun! I worked on the launch of Teen People magazine in their consumer marketing division—essentially direct marketing to grow the subscriber base and manage newsstand sales. I got to work on a commercial featuring NSYNC and a very young Justin Timberlake—lol!

I enjoyed Time Inc., but after earning my MBA, I realized I wanted to further my business education by pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) with the intention to teach at a university. I’ve always liked learning and being around other curious people. I chose to focus my doctoral studies on management, which I felt had application to any business discipline. My corporate work experience in accounting, finance, and marketing has made me a bit of a jack-of-all-trades—which can be helpful as an Associate Dean.

What are some challenges you had to overcome to get to where you are today?

Finding balance in my work and home life was a challenge. It’s difficult at times to be a working parent, but academia can provide more flexibility than other jobs. It helps to have a supportive partner and a community of friends and colleagues you can rely on when necessary. You don’t have to do it alone.

Of which triumph are you most proud?

I’ll focus on a professional triumph—the first academic paper I ever published won the Best Paper Award for that journal. It was a meta-analysis on stress management interventions. I’m particularly proud of it because the paper began as a class assignment in one of my doctoral classes. A professor in another course dismissed the idea of organizations caring about the stress levels of their employees. But at the encouragement of my doctoral advisor and co-author, I stuck with the topic and continued working on the paper after the course ended. I went on to present it at a conference, and not only was it published in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, but it won the Best Paper Award for 2008–2009. The meta-analysis has over 2,100 citations and still garners more than 100 citations per year. Clearly, it struck a chord.

What is the single most important lesson you’d like to impart to your students?

Don’t stress! I know students have a lot of worries about passing their courses and finding a job, but it’s going to work out. And if you wind up in an organization or profession that you don’t like—change. People can have several careers over their lifetime. I’m already on my third and counting—so don’t feel stuck in any job, and never settle. Learn something new and move on!

What does #LubinLife mean to you?

#LubinLife means we’re all connected in this great community. We come from diverse backgrounds and have expertise and interest in different fields, but we share a common goal of Opportunitas. We are stronger together!

Courses Professor Richardson teaches:

• BUS 101: Contemporary Business Practice
• MGT 365: Managerial Negotiations
• MGT 363: Training and Development
• MGT 150: Managerial and Organizational Concepts
• MGT 650: Negotiations and Bargaining
• MGT 683: Training and Development
• MGT 685: Recruitment and Staffing
• MGT 835: Seminar in Organizational Behavior