Thanks for hosting me at this interview. It’s a good question to start with, so I’m happy to answer this. I am from India, originally. I completed undergraduate and graduate degree in India, before moving to United States for my PhD. I did my PhD at the State University of New York at Buffalo. I finished the PhD in 1999 but I moved to Arizona in ’98. I’ve been here in Tempe, Arizona State University for the last nearly twenty years. The thing that you enjoy being in Phoenix is the outdoor activities. More than eight months of the year I get to hike, we have a lot of hills in the Phoenix area and nearby. That’s what I enjoy. In the summers, when you have to get out of here because of the heat, that’s when I like to travel to different countries, enjoy new cultures and new places.

So W.P. Carey School of Business at ASU, it's a large university. We have nearly a hundred thousand students, and within the W.P. Carey school of Business, my department, the Information Systems department offers two majors at the undergraduate level. One is the Information Systems major, it has about six hundred students. The other is the Business Data Analytics major, that has another four hundred students. We also offer a certificate program called Applied Business Data Analytics, which has nearly six hundred students right now. At the Masters level, our department offers two degree programs. One is Masters in Information Management, and the other is the Masters in Business Analytics. Both of those programs are offered online as well as onsite. And of course, the W.P. Carey school also offers an MBA program.

We do look for a variety of experiences in the business school. As a result, especially in our Masters program, we attract a wide variety of students, so I don’t think anyone who has a non-business degree or a non-technical degree should feel discouraged to apply to the Masters program in Business, especially in Information Management and Business Analytics. When it comes to Business Analytics, if you have some inclination towards quantitative sciences, you feel comfortable with maths, and in dealing with data, working with softwares that do statistical analysis, you will do well. With Information Management, it is actually better if you have a diverse background, it doesn’t have to be specifically Information Systems. But if you have some knowledge in business, especially if you have worked in that for a few years, then that’s a really good advantage to have in that program.It’s important that they have an inclination towards being in a professional career, that’s the first step. But the more business experience you have, especially if it is technology focused, that’s pretty much what we look for when we evaluate the applications.