Daniel Diermeier is the IBM Distinguished Professor of Regulation and Competitive Practice, a Professor of Managerial Economics and Decision Sciences at the Kellogg School of Management, and a Professor of Political Science at the Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences at Northwestern University. He is the director of the Ford Motor Company Center for Global Citizenship, which is home to the Global Health Initiative. Professor Diermeier also served as the founding director of the Social Enterprise at Kellogg program (SEEK) and the founding co-director of the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems (NICO). He is a co-creator and academic director of the CEO Perspective Program, a joint venture between the Kellogg School of Management, the Corporate Leadership Center, and Kellogg’s most senior executive education program.

Professor Diermeier’s teaching and research focuses on political institutions, the interaction of business and politics, crisis leadership, reputation management, integrated strategy, and strategic aspects of corporate social responsibility. His work has been published in numerous academic journals in management, economics, and political science and has been featured globally in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, the Financial Times, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, and De Telegraaf. He has lectured globally and led customized programs on crisis and reputation management, biotechnology, integrated strategy, activists and consumer boycotts, regulatory management, medical marketing, media management, security management, and transportation management. He has received numerous awards including the prestigious L.G. Lavengood Professor of the Year Award (Kellogg School of Management) and the Faculty Pioneer Award from the Aspen Institute.

Professor Diermeier has been advisor to some of the world’s leading companies including Abbott, Accenture, Allianz, Baker & McKenzie , BP, Cargill, the City of Chicago (Office of the Mayor), CIBC, Exelon, the FBI, W. W. Grainger, Guidant, HSBC, Intercontinental Exchange, Johnson & Johnson, Kraft, McDonald’s, Metro AG, Nicor, People’s Energy, Roche Diagnostics, and State Farm.

Professor Diermeier is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago. In December 2004 he was appointed to the Management Board of the FBI. He has also served as a senior strategic advisor to PricewaterhouseCoopers and is an advisory board member for Quantum Secure, a security management technology company, and The Point, a technology company facilitating social organization.

Email: d-diermeier@kellogg.northwestern.edu

David M. Kelso is Associate Professor of Biomedical Engineering in Northwestern’s McCormick School of Engineering and Applied Sciences.   He has been a leader in the school’s expansion of its engineering design curriculum which has resulted in the Engineering Design and Communications (EDC) courses for freshmen, the Institute of Design Engineering and Applications (IDEA), and the Masters in Product Development (MPD) program.   Prof. Kelso recently introduced medical device design projects for the developing world into the senior biomedical engineering design course, and he has started an engineering design study abroad program in South Africa.

Before joining Northwestern, Prof. Kelso developed a number of medical devices for the healthcare industry.  He was Chief Scientist at Baxter Healthcare’s Pandex Division from 1986 to 1992 and directed the team of engineers and scientists which developed the first high-throughput, multi-channel blood screening system which detected HIV, hepatitis and other infectious diseases.

In 1981, Prof. Kelso founded Pandex Laboratories and served as its president until 1986 when it was acquired by Baxter.  The company developed, manufactured and sold analytical systems for biomedical research which included instruments and reagents for performing fluorescence immunoassays, cellular analysis and other research procedures. 

Prior to his biotech venture, Prof. Kelso was a cofounder of an intrapreneurial group at Abbott Laboratories which developed the TDx system and created the company’s therapeutic drug monitoring business.  At Abbott, he also develop the first microprocessor-controlled enzyme immunoassay analyzer, Quantum, which lead the industry away from radioactive assays which had been the standard for decades.

Email: kels@northwestern.edu

Sarang Deo joined Kellogg School of Management in 2007 after completing his PhD from UCLA Anderson School of Management. His primary research interest is application of operations management methods to design efficient and effective healthcare delivery systems. His current work focuses on issues in resource-poor countries (developing models for HIV treatment scale-up, studying the impact of patient load on quality of care) as well as the US (joint planning of HIV screening and treatment at the Veterans Administration, theoretical and empirical investigation into the causes of ambulance diversion).

Read about Sarang's recent research in Kellogg's Insight magazine: "Rational Rationing: Allocating scarce resources in uncertain conditions."

Email: s-deo@kellogg.northwestern.edu

Kara Palamountain is a Research Assistant Professor at the Kellogg School of Management where she serves as the Executive Director of the Global Health Initiative. Kara's research focus is centered on medical diagnostics for infectious diseases in the developing world. In 2003, she began working with Dave Kelso on an initiative to develop and produce affordable HIV diagnostics for the developing world which later obtained funding in 2006 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Prior to her work at Kellogg, Kara worked as a management consultant in Deloitte's Healthcare practice for over six years where she specialized in Medicare Part D strategy and implementation, pharmacy benefit management, and medical injectable strategy.

Kara was awarded "2003 Ford Center Honorable Mention" for a white paper on "Sustainable Foundations for HIV/AIDS Care in South Africa" which was later published in the "Kellogg Anthology on Corporate Social Responsibility."

Email: k-palamountain@kellogg.northwestern.edu