Welcome our new faculty members

Join us in welcoming our newest faculty members to UNC Kenan-Flagler. They are excited to contribute to our tradition of excellence in teaching, research and service.

Click on their names to read more about them.

Charlie An focuses on the intersection of firms’ innovation strategies and government institutions, particularly how intellectual property (IP) laws and related policies influence innovators and their technologies, and vice versa. He explores both domestic and global markets, examining empirical contexts such as IP application, licensing, and enforcement (including patent litigation). He teaches courses in strategy and entrepreneurship. He received his PhD from Washington University in St. Louis.

LaChaun Banks areas of expertise are economic development, strategic planning, leadership and management. She teaches markets and government courses focused on sustainable growth and experiential learning. She is a research fellow at the Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise, examining drivers of place-based economic growth for its American Growth Project. She joined us from Harvard Kennedy School’s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Bloomberg Center for Cities. She earned her MBA from UNC Kenan-Flagler and MPA from Harvard Kennedy School.

Manoj Chari is an expert in data science, business analytics and operations research. He teaches business analytics courses. He has held a variety of industry positions, including a data science director at Otis Elevator Company, where he worked on predictive analytics models, and SAS Institute, where he was senior director in the analytics research and development division. He joins us from the faculty at Elon University, where he was director of its Center for Organizational Analytics. He received his PhD from UNC-Chapel Hill.

Terence McElroy studies the intersections of political ideology, multicultural experiences and leadership. He teaches leadership courses. As an officer in the U.S. Army, his time in Ranger School and Afghanistan provided firsthand insights into the profound impact of leadership and culture on behavior. His work as a management consultant reinforced the importance of applied research, shaping his approach to both scholarship and teaching. He received his PhD from UNC Kenan-Flagler.

Melissa Hart teaches courses in personal and corporate finance. She is co-author of financial literacy texts for college and high school students. She is a member of the North Carolina Association of Certified Public Accountants and a licensed CPA in North Carolina and Maryland. She worked in public accounting in auditing, tax compliance and consulting for eight years. She joins us from the North Carolina State Poole College of Management, where she received several teaching awards, and earned her MBA.

Navid Mojir studies organizational buying and selling, and the implications of novel data collection and analysis technologies like the Internet of Things and AI for business-to-business marketing. He teaches product management. He has worked with organizations across various industries – from the Federal Reserve to medical device manufacturers, and heavy-construction equipment sellers – to assemble proprietary datasets to study organizational buying. He joins us from Harvard Business School. He received his PhD from the Yale School of Management.

Mirela Sandulescu’s research interests span the fields of empirical and theoretical asset pricing, along with machine learning. She delves into critical areas such as the degree of market integration, international financial markets, portfolio and expectations formation, and financial intermediation. She teaches courses in financial economics and asset pricing, and financial management. She joins UNC Kenan-Flagler from the University of Michigan. She received her PhD in economics from the University of Lugano in Switzerland.