FACULTY SPOTLIGHT

Corinne Post’s Passion for Learning and Research Is Catching

“Absolutely wonderful!” That’s how Corinne Post, PhD, described her first year as the Fred J. Springer Endowed Chair in Business Leadership and professor of Management. Dr. Post was appointed to the role in March 2021, which meant that her experience this first year was marked by a slow return to on-campus life and face-to-face interactions. “It gave me a chance to get to know the campus and to meet students and faculty gradually, which I’m grateful for,” she says.

Dr. Post is no stranger to academia, having served as the C. Scott Hartz ’68 Term Professor and Chair of the Department of Management, College of Business at Lehigh University, and having previously taught at the Lubin School of Business at Pace University. But her professional life actually started in the corporate world. “When I was an undergraduate, my teachers encouraged me to get my PhD and consider an academic career,” she says. “To help me make up my mind, I thought I should sample both.”

Dr. Post attended school in Switzerland, earning her BS in Organization Management from HEC, University of Geneva and a master’s in International Management from HEC, University of Lausanne. She received her PhD in Organization Management from Rutgers University. Her father worked for an international organization—her father is French and her mother Swiss. Growing up, Dr. Post had the opportunity to live among diverse cultures, first in Tunisia, North Africa, and later Switzerland. Some of her early experiences inform her research today. “I spent one college summer break backpacking across the United States. I was impressed with how shops and businesses were open late into the night and on weekends, in stark contrast to my experience in Europe. While I was traveling, someone asked me what I liked most about the U.S. and I explained how being able to do anything anytime felt exhilarating. Their response was sobering. They said that this freedom came at a cost: when employees need to work at all hours, they can’t also be with their families.” After completing her master’s, Dr. Post returned to the U.S., joining Accenture initially as a business solution delivery analyst and later as an information management lead in human resources. “I enjoyed my work and the people were great, but I noticed I was becoming more and more interested in why people were doing what they did in the organization and not as much in what they were doing.”

Dr. Post’s research focuses on workplace diversity, particularly women on boards, in top management teams and in leadership roles; diversity as enabler or impediment to group and organizational performance; and career trajectories. “People come to organizations with a wealth of diverse experience. Yet, time and again, we see the same patterns emerging and instead of trying something new, everyone does the same things they did before. My work helps uncover and understand those patterns,” she says. At VSB, her responsibilities include enhancing the quality of scholarship, leadership and service within and beyond Villanova, and she’s off to a rousing start. She’s designing an MBA course on leading inclusively and is a regular contributor at Forbes.com. She continues to present her research at academic conferences and professional organizations, is a past grant recipient from the National Science Foundation, and recently won the Academy of Management Gender & Diversity in Organizations Division 2022 Sage Award for Scholarly Contributions.

As Dr. Post describes her work, her interest is obvious— and contagious. She clearly loves what she does and is able to communicate that passion to her listeners. She does confess to enjoying what she calls “work-cations,” spending a certain amount of her leisure time reading and researching, though when the weather is nice, you’ll find her out bike riding. She also enjoys spending time with her family—husband Steve and adult children Samantha, Valentin and Natalie. And, if she really needs an escape from her favorite research subject, a good murder mystery does the trick. “I find once I start one, I can’t put it down.”