FACULTY & STAFF

FACULTY DIRECTORS

RUDRA SIL, PHD
Faculty Director for the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, The School of Arts and Sciences, Professor of Political Science

Rudra Sil is Professor of Political Science and the SAS Director of the Huntsman Program in International Studies & Business. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley and has been teaching at Penn since 1996. His research and teaching interests encompass comparative politics, Russian/post-communist studies, Asian studies, the politics of labor, international development, international relations theory, qualitative methodology, and the philosophy of the social sciences.  He is author, coauthor or coeditor of seven books. His two monographs are Managing ‘Modernity’: Work, Community, and Authority in Late-Industrializing Japan and Russia (University of Michigan Press, 2002) and Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics (Palgrave-Macmillan, 2010), coauthored with Peter Katzenstein. The latter book was honored as a CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title in 2011.  Prof. Sil is also author of three dozen articles and book chapters. He also serves on the editorial boards of two journals, Comparative Political Studies and Russian Politics, and is an elected board member of the Committee on Concepts and Methods of the International Political Science Association (2016-19). Prof. Sil is currently working on two books, Russia Reconsidered:  Fate of a Former Superpower (under contract, Cambridge University Press) and Pathways of the Post-communist Proletariat: Labor Politics in Russia, China and Eastern Europe.  Research related to the latter project was presented in a paper that received the award for Best Paper in Labor Studies at the 2013 Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association. Dr. Sil’s College of Arts & Sciences Profile.

HARBIR SINGH, PHD
Faculty Director for the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business, The Wharton School, Mack Professor; Professor of Management, Co-Director, Mack Institute for Innovation Management; Wharton School

Harbir Singh is the Mack Professor; professor of Management; and co-director of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management at Wharton. He is also Wharton’s faculty director of the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. He has also served as past chairperson of the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management and chairperson of Wharton’s Management Department. He has served on the editorial boards of several leading management journals. His research on the role of cultural distance in explaining the choice of entry mode by multinationals won the JIBS Decade Award, presented by the Journal of International Business Studies. He has also received the Strategic Management Society’s Award for Outstanding Research. He is a fellow of the Strategic Management Society, the premier professional body for research in strategy, and was named its dean in 2015. Harbir has taught extensively in Wharton’s multiple degree programs. He is on the Academic Advisory Board of the Indian School of Business, and has been a visiting professor at the London Business School and Bocconi University, Italy. He has worked with companies such as GlaxoSmithKline, Verizon, Cisco, and the Aditya Birla Group on issues relating to strategy, alliances, and acquisitions. Dr. Singh’s Wharton Profile.

ADMINISTRATIVE STAFF

KELLY CLEARY
Director

Prior to joining the program in May 2018, Kelly served as the Dean of Career and Professional Advising at Haverford College. She is delighted to return to Penn, having supported students as a Senior Associate Director in Career Services from 2007-2013. She has also worked as a trainer for the U.S. State Department’s Irish Peace Process Cultural & Training Program in Belfast, Northern Ireland and Washington, D.C., and held advising roles at Stetson University, the University of Iowa, and George Washington University. Her first job was as a teaching intern at the Marymount International School in Rome, Italy. She has a B.A. in English from Wake Forest University, an M.A. in Community Counseling from George Washington University, and an Ed.D. in Higher Education from Penn, with a research focus on interning abroad on career development.

OSMAN BALKAN, PhD
Associate Director and Program Director of Curriculum, Experiential Learning, and Innovation

Osman Balkan is Associate Director and Program Director of Curriculum, Experiential Learning, and Innovation at the Huntsman Program in International Studies and Business. He holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania and a B.A. in Political Science from Reed College. Dr. Balkan’s research and scholarship focuses on borders and migration, race and ethnicity, identity and inequality, and the politics of collective memory. His first book, Dying Abroad: The Political Afterlives of Migration in Europe is forthcoming with Cambridge University Press as part of its LSE International Studies Series.

At Huntsman, Dr. Balkan offers instructional support for the first-year seminar, INSP 1001: International Studies and Business- A Global View, and oversees the senior year integrative research by students both in theses and in the capstone projects, working closely with seniors to advance their independent research. He is also responsible for designing and facilitating experiential learning initiatives, including the Huntsman Global Immersion Course, that extend educational opportunities beyond the classroom through off-campus excursions and collaborations with community partners. Additionally, he works hand-in-hand with numerous research centers and institutes at the University of Pennsylvania to enhance curricular programing and promote intellectual exchange, discussion, and debate.

Dr. Balkan has extensive experience in the field of international education having served as Director of the Europe Regional Program and Faculty Coordinator of the Global Immersion Program at the Lauder Institute of Management and International Studies at Penn as well as Resident Director of the U.S. State Department’s Critical Language Scholarship Program in Turkey. He has held faculty positions at Cornell University and Swarthmore College, where he worked to promote the academic, interpersonal, and professional success of students from a wide range of backgrounds including international, first-generation, low income, and minority students. Prior to his academic career, he worked in arts and culture, helping produce the Contemporary Istanbul Art Fair and New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival as well as the International Center of Photography’s Infinity Awards.

SARVELIA PERALTA-DURAN
Associate Director and Program Director for Intercultural and Global Initiatives

Prior to joining the program, Sarvelia served as the Administrative Director for the Jerome Fisher Program in Management and Technology where she managed the program’s operations and provided key services to students including academic advising and co-curricular programming. Prior to joining M&T, Sarvelia directed the Wharton Global Consulting Practicum, a cross-functional course and embedded consulting practice for MBA and Executive MBA students. Sarvelia co-founded The Blue Door Group, a training and education consulting practice focused on designing, facilitating, and teaching interactive processes for learning and capacity building. She also taught Experiential Learning Design, a core course for the Intercultural Communications master’s degree at the Graduate School of Education at Penn.

Sarvelia attended The University of Pennsylvania as a First-Generation, Low-Income (FGLI) international student and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with a double major in Psychology and Fine Arts from the College of Arts and Sciences. She holds a Master of Arts in Intercultural Service, Leadership, and Management from the School for International Training Graduate Institute. Prior to attending Penn, she completed one year of Psychology coursework at the University of Vienna, Austria. Originally from Mexico, Sarvelia is a passionate interculturalist and global citizen having resided in Mexico, Singapore, Austria and the U.S.

ELLA STRAUSS
Communications and Programming Coordinator

Prior to joining the program in November 2021, Ella worked at the Free Library of Philadelphia Foundation as the Major Gifts and Planned Giving Coordinator. At Wharton, she will be returning to working with college students.  For three and a half years, she held multiple positions at Campus Philly, a non-profit working to help Philadelphia college students fall in love with the city. Before coming back home to Philadelphia, Ella lived in Charlotte, NC and worked in Alumni Relations at her alma mater, Davidson College. She has a B.A. in History from Davidson and spent a semester abroad in India. In her free time, Ella enjoys basketball, checking out the newest restaurants and planning her next trip. She is already at 65 countries and counting.

AFFILIATED FACULTY AND TEACHING ASSISTANTS

Jaeho Kim
Teaching Assistant

Jaeho Kim is a second-year Ph.D. student in management at the Wharton School. He conducts research on strategies for fostering technological innovation by entrepreneurial individuals, firms, and ecosystems. His present work addresses the structures for interfirm collaboration in innovation ecosystems and the practices for the development of human capital in technology firms. Prior to joining Wharton, Jaeho worked as a research associate in the Strategy Unit at the Harvard Business School.

Previous Affiliated Faculty and Teaching Assistants

Exequiel Hernandez, PhD Max and Bernice Garchik Family Presidential Assistant Professor, MGMT 409: Huntsman Capstone Study, 2021-2022

Jason Lee, PhD candidate in Management, Teaching Assistant, 2020-2021

Giovani Rocha, PhD candidate in Political Science and Africana Studies, Teaching Assistant, 2020-2021

Raka Sen, PhD candidate in Sociology, Teaching Assistant, 2020-2021

Advisory Board

The Huntsman Program Advisory Board consists of Penn alumni, most with degrees from either the College or Wharton. Board members are senior level professionals, primarily from the business community, who provide advice and assistance to the Program. Board members are global in their perspective, with current members hailing from Asia, Europe, Latin America, and the United States.

Current Members

Mohammed Afkhami C’96 | Managing Partner of MA Partners DMCC

Emilio Bassini, W’71, C’71, WG’73 | Managing Principal, Bassini & Co, LLC

John Colas, W’84 | Partner, Oliver Wyman

Manuel Dubon, W’63, L’66 | President, D Group Equities & Affiliates

Elizabeth Granville-Smith, C’91, WG’96 | Managing Director, BV Investment Partners

Michael Heric, W’93, C’93 | Partner, Bain & Company

Paul Huntsman, WG’00 | President, Huntsman Family Investments

Sheryl Kaye, W’86 | President, JCC Manhattan

Donald Lim, W’86, SEAS’86 | Director and Chief Operating Officer, Hotel Equatorial Management Sdn. Bhd.

Matthew Luth, W’00, C’00 | Deputy CIO and Managing Director, HBK Capital Management

Mazy Moghadam, W’93 | Managing Director, Julius Baer International Ltd.

John Reinsberg (Chair), C’78 | Deputy Chairman, Lazard Asset Management LLC

Jonathan Rosenstein, C’86 | CEO & Founder, Trilogy Capital, LLC

Ricardo Salmon, W’93 | Managing Partner, Silver River Capital Partners

Henrik Schliemann, C’88 | PMB Capital Limited, Private Merchant Banking

Jeffrey Seltzer, W’78 | Managing Partner, Pierce Yates Ventures LLC

Rohit Singh, W’02, C’02 | Managing Director, Consumer Products & Retail Group, Americas UBS

Rajiv Sobti W’84 | Managing Partner and Chief Investment Officer, Karya Capital Management LP

Luis Virata, WG’79 | Chairman & CEO, CLSA Exchange Capital, Inc.

Dan Zilberman WG’01 | Partner & Head of Special Situations, Warburg Pincus, Senior Fellow, The Wharton School

Alumni Council

The Huntsman Alumni Council (HAC) is a highly engaged and committed group of 23 alumni, representing different cohorts, who also provide advice and assistance to the Program. The HAC provides perspective on the impact of various dimensions the Program has had on the careers of its graduates. Thus far, HAC contributions include increasing the number of alumni interviewers for admissions, organizing regional social events, creating an alumni fund to support scholarships for international students, and supporting students’ professional development by facilitating alumni-student connections for internship recruiting and mentoring activities.

Current Members

Nicolas  Aguirre (Huntsman ’11) Target Language: Italian | Vice President, Brown Brothers Harriman

Julio Germán Arias (Huntsman ’14) Target Language: Portuguese | Vice President, Strategy & Expansion, Superfuds

Daniel Cruz-Russo (Huntsman ’18) Target Language: Portuguese | Product Marketing Manager, Google

Ghita Chraibi (Huntsman ’18) Target Language: Spanish | PhD Candidate at University of Virginia

Desiree Dubon (Huntsman ’00) Target Language: French | Executive Vice President, D Group Management NA, LLC

Maribeth Gainard (Huntsman ’02) Target Language: French | Chief Human Resources Officer, BSE Global

Leslie Hicks (Huntsman ’19) Target Language: French | Consultant, The Bridgespan Group

Jenny Jau (Huntsman ’99) Target Language: Chinese | Director, Product Management, Amazon

Vinayak Kakodkar (Huntsman ’05) Target Language: Spanish | Financial Advisor, Neuberger Berman Bd LLC

Aditi Kumar (Huntsman ’10) Target Language: French | Senior Advisor, United States Department of Defense

Vijay Mehta (Huntsman ’04) Target Language: Spanish | Founder, ArkView Capital

Joyce Meng (Huntsman ’08) Target Language: Spanish | CEO & Founder, FACT Capital | Co-Founder, Givology

Liz Nunez (Huntsman ’17) Target Language: Italian | Technology Equity Research, BlackRock Inc.

Joshua Ashi Okonneh (Huntsman ’15) Target Language: Portuguese | Wharton MBA candidate 2024 | Lauder Institute

Ritika Philip (Huntsman ’18) Target Language: Mandarin | Associate, Boston Consulting Group

Zachary Sweeney (Huntsman ’20) Target Language: Spanish | Credit Lead, Ness

Manoj Susarla (Huntsman ’04) Target Language: Hindi | Managing Director, Morgan Stanley

Anthony Tse (Huntsman ’00) Target Language: Mandarin | Fund Director, Solas Fiduciary Services

Daniel Urgelles (Huntsman ’11) Target Language: Portuguese | Private Equity, TowerBrook Capital Partners

Dominic Waltz (Huntsman ’14) Target Language: French | Associate-Hybrid Value, Apollo Global Management Inc., MS in Management Science & Engineering Candidate at Stanford University

Yusi Wang (Huntsman ’19) Target Language: Spanish | MS in Entrepreneurship & Innovation Candidate at BI Norwegian Business School

Max von Weisberg (Huntsman ’12) Target Language: French | Global Director, L’Oréal Luxe

Sydney Werber (Huntsman ’14) Target Language: Mandarin | Vice President of Finance & Operations, Avise

Sharon Yang (Huntsman ’98) arget Language: Mandarin | Financial Regulatory Policy, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

Mei-Ni Yang-Teng (Huntsman ’00) Target Language: Japanese | Managing Director, Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan