With the start of a new school year came new faculty to Darden! Darden welcomed six new faculty members from all over the country and world into our community earlier this summer. Here are some of the international backgrounds and experiences they bring to Darden’s global community:
Ozlem Yildiz, Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Ozlem received her bachelors in industrial engineering from the Middle East Technical University in Turkey, where she lived until moving to New York to pursue her master’s and doctorate degrees from the University of Rochester Simon Business School. She has taught in MBA and Executive MBA programs for Simon Business School and London Business School all over the world in Rochester, London and Dubai. If she could take a vacation anywhere in the world, Ozlem would visit Bali. Her favorite thing about Darden is the inclusive culture that the Darden community has created and stands for.
Ting Xu, Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Charlottesville is the smallest city Ting has ever called home. Originally from China, Ting grew up in Nanchang with a population of six million. Since then, he has lived in Beijing, Hong Kong and most recently Vancouver, where he completed his PhD in Finance from the Sauder School of Business at the University of British Columbia. One of his favorite global experiences was staying at the St John’s College at UBC, where residents from more than 20 countries gather for communal dinners. At Darden, he enjoys exploring different ideas with students both inside and outside the classroom.
Davide Tomio, Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Davide grew up in Treviso, a small town in northeastern Italy, where he lived until he graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Venice. He then relocated to Denmark, to pursue his Masters in Economics at the University of Copenhagen. During his PhD studies at Copenhagen Business School, he spent a semester at Cornell and a year at NYU. One of his favorite travel memories is visiting the Shinto shrine floating on the water outside the island of Miyajima, in Japan. Davide says he is reminded he made the right choice coming to Darden when people in the school go the extra mile to achieve excellence, whether it be planning a course or organizing a social event. His favorite thing about Darden is just how palpable the sense of community is and how everyone makes an effort to be inclusive. For example, when his colleagues drop by the office to invite him over for dinner or drinks.
Dana Popescu, Associate Professor of Business Administration
Dana joins Darden’s Quantitative Analysis faculty from INSEAD in Singapore, where she previously spent eight years teaching in their MBA and executive programs in Asia and Europe. She is originally from Pitesti, Romania and has lived in various countries on three different continents. Her most exciting adventure was a two-week bus trip through India that involved watching a Bollywood film in a remote village, sleeping in exotic palaces-turned-hotels, and dodging many scorpions.
