Rosanna Garcia, an expert on business innovation and marketing, joined the WPI faculty on July 1 as the Paul R. Beswick Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship in The Business School.
Garcia, who has a PhD in marketing from the Eli Broad Graduate School of Business at Michigan State University, was most recently the Walter Koch Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship at the University of Denver; she previously held associate professor positions at North Carolina State University and Northeastern University. Her research on entrepreneurism, innovation, and consumer behavior has been published in peer-reviewed journals; she is the author of the textbook Creating & Marketing New Products and Services. She co-founded Vijilent Inc., a data science company that serves the legal industry.
“Dr. Garcia is an accomplished leader who brings exceptional academic credentials, a passion for encouraging minority and female student entrepreneurs, and extensive experience mentoring hundreds of student start-up businesses,” says Debora Jackson, dean of The Business School. “She shares our collective vision at WPI for transforming business education and furthering our progress toward making societal impact while also engaging diverse constituencies. We are so excited to welcome her to The Business School and to WPI’s thriving innovation and entrepreneurship ecosystem.”
The Beswick Professorship was launched in 2007 with a gift from the late Paul R. Beswick ’57 and his wife, Siang Kiang. Beswick was the founder, president, and chief executive officer of Beswick Engineering Inc. in Greenland, N.H.
Garcia earned her MBA in marketing and finance at the University of Rochester, and her BS in chemical engineering and BA in business economics at the University of California, Santa Barbara.