BOOST is run by a uniquely multidisciplinary, diverse team of accomplished scholars interested in research with real-world impact.
Dr. Aysu Senyuz is BOOST's Program Director since August 2022. Her research focuses on the role of emotions in consumer behavior with an emphasis on social relationships and social impact. She employs experimental design, empirical models, and field studies in her research to advance the understanding of practical problems and to positively impact the lives of consumers. Prior to obtaining her Ph.D., she has worked for multiple global companies.
Dr. Yusaf Akbar teaches business strategy. His experience includes coaching and teaching thousands of executives in more than 40 countries and providing strategic consulting to both major companies and startups in Europe, the Middle East, Asia and South America. He is the founding editor of the International Journal of Emerging Markets, and has a forthcoming book in 2018 with the title Strategic Management in Emerging Markets.
Dr. Jean-Louis Fabiani teaches the sociology of high performance and professional success. He studied at the Ecole Normale Superieure and got his PhD at EHESS (Paris). He has held various positions in the academic world as well as in the cultural sphere. He is the author of 12 books, including Les Philosophes de la République (1988), l'Education populaire et le théâtre (2008) and Pierre Bourdieu: Un structuralisme héroïque (2016).
Dr. Christophe Heintz teaches about the irrational choices that we all make, and how some contexts of choice help us make better decisions. His research focuses on the role of adaptive cognition in shaping economic behavior and cultural evolution.
Dr. Maciej Kisilowski, a graduate of Yale, Princeton, and INSEAD, was the BOOST founding program director until July 2022. He teaches strategy for nonprofit and public-sector careers. With extensive experience in working with public sector executives in many countries, he is the author of Administrategy -- a book on the topic that has been translated into five languages. He is the 2016 recipient of the CEU Distinguished Teaching Award.
Dr. Davide Torsello is professor of anthropology and organizational behavior. He has extensive experience of ethnographic field research in organizations and communities in Japan, Italy and Eastern Europe. He has been studying political and business corruption, focusing in particular on the social and cultural as well as the organizational cultural aspects of the phenomenon including gift-exchange, ethics, values, informality, trust, social networks, organizational culture, change and globalization. He has published over sixty journal articles and ten books, three of which on corruption: Corruption in the Public Administration: an Ethnographic Approach (Edward Elgar, 2016); The New Environmentalism? Civil Society and Corruption in the Enlarged EU (Ashgate, 2012); and Debates on Corruption and Integrity. Perspectives from Europe and the US (Palgrave, co-edited with P. Heywood and P. Hardi, 2015). He has contributed to one Siemens Integrity Initiative project developing an educational curriculum framework on business integrity and anti-corruption focusing on the Eastern European and former Soviet Union region. He has consulted and conducted training for UNODC, Daimler and the International Anti-Corruption Academy and other business, public administration and third sector organizations on anti-corruption, organizational ethics and integrity, cultural awareness in management and business anthropology. He is the director of CEU Center for Integrity in Business and Government.
Dr. Violetta Zentai teaches gender and ethnic dimensions of professional success and performance. She is a cultural anthropologist focused on ethnic and gender inequalities, post-socialist capitalist transformations, political and policy debates on social inclusion, and pro-equality civil society formations. At CEU, she co-directs the Center for Policy Studies and is on faculty at the School of Public Policy and the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology.
