Innovation Leadership
Our Faculty
Laura Dunham, Ph.D.,is an associate professor at the Schulze School of Entrepreneurship within the Opus College of Business at the University of St. Thomas, where she teaches both graduate and undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship and corporate innovation. She earned her Ph.D and MBA from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia. Her research focuses on the managerial challenges involved in innovation and new business start-up and development. Prior to her doctoral studies, Dr. Dunham worked as a management consultant in the strategy division of Renaissance Worldwide, helping clients such as Oracle, IBM, Lucent, and GTE, to identify, evaluate and develop new growth initiatives.
John McVea, Ph.D., is an associate professor at the University of St. Thomas who specializes in entrepreneurial strategy, managerial decision-making, and business ethics. He comes from northern Ireland and has worked extensively in countries in Europe and in the Americas.
He has undergraduate degrees in Engineering (BSc.) and in Economics (BCom.) from the University of Birmingham in England. After college, he spent ten years in the international chemical business (including Dupont and ICI Europe) in roles ranging from factory manager to new market development. In 1986, John earned a MBA from the Darden School at the University of Virginia and was awarded the Shermet Scholarship for academic excellence. Subsequent to this, John spent several years as a strategy consultant working for Bain & Co. in Boston. This experience included giving strategic advice to numerous Fortune 500 companies as well as carrying out due diligence research for private equity investments. In 1998, he returned to the Darden School to complete a Ph.D. in management, specializing in the areas of entrepreneurship and ethics. He has taught business ethics and developed a new entrepreneurship course at the University of Virginia.
At the University of St. Thomas, he currently teaches entrepreneurship classes. He has had several publications and book chapters published in the area of both entrepreneurial strategy and business ethics. Currently, he is completing research in the area of decision-making in ethically pioneering situations, such as biotechnology and stakeholder management, and is developing a number of business case studies from the Twin Cities area for use in class discussions at St. Thomas.
