FOCUS ON FACULTY
Faculty Feature: Jean Kilgore, Senior Lecturer, Marketing and Policy Studies
Q: Although you are currently the Senior Lecturer of Marketing and Policy Studies for Weatherhead and the Mandel Center, as well as the Center's Director of Professional Development Programs, you've had an array of different positions throughout your career. Please explain to us a bit about the path that led you to your positions at Case.
A: When I think back, I realize that in my professional life - and my personal life, as well, in many ways - I've almost always been involved with the nonprofit sector. My first "real job" was at The Ford Foundation in New York and set the stage for a deep and lifelong interest in the sector. When I moved back to Cleveland, I ended up in child advocacy (and worked with Laura Chisolm, who now teaches nonprofit law for the Center!), which led to my position in development at Rainbow Babies and Children's Hospital. While I was at Rainbow, I enrolled in the MBA program at Weatherhead (just before the Center opened in 1984) and really just continued on into the Ph.D. program, where my research focused on collaborations between the private and nonprofit sectors. While I went back to being a practitioner for a while (in healthcare/senior services) after finishing my Ph.D., the diversity of activities in academia really drew me back.
Q: How have you been able to handle your new position at the Center along with your teaching position? What is the number one thing you do to keep organized?
A: That's a very good question! I think work life today requires new approaches to time management that not only incorporate workable techniques but also can be customized to fit individual work styles. (I'm reading David Allen's Getting Things Done and finding it very helpful). That said, I make lists. The challenge is keeping them all in the same place.
Q: What kinds of projects have you been working on at the Mandel Center and what are some of your goals in this position?
A: My main project at the Center has been planning Professional Development Programs for the next academic year, when the Center will have its own building. Since I'm new to the Center, this project has included not only getting a sense of our markets' needs but also learning about the history of Professional Development since the Center opened its doors in 1984.
Q: What are some of your favorite areas of research that you've been a part of, and are you currently working on any new research?
A: I loved my dissertation research, which was on the types of social issues that US-based multinational corporations are involved in when entering new markets in other countries - and whether and how those social initiatives may complement their business development efforts. Since completing that work, I've also spent time on more practitioner-oriented studies of companies' community involvement in this region and other metropolitan areas of the U.S. (For one of these projects, members of a Cleveland Bridge Builders' class carried out the interviews; working with them was one of my favorite research experiences.) Recently, I've worked with academic colleagues on research related to the connection between private sector products, business practices, and social welfare; unfortunately, I haven't had time to continue this research this year.
Q: What other interests, hobbies, etc do you try to make time for?
A: I'm on the board of Hospice of the Western Reserve and chair the board's marketing committee. I'm very interested in issues related to aging, as well as animal welfare, and the arts. And I love to travel.
Q: What book are you currently reading?
A: Right now I'm reading Adam Gopnik's Through the Children's Gate: A Home in New York - a series of essays about living in New York City just before, during, and since 9/11. I'm still a bit of a New Yorker at heart.
