What does it take to lead in a world shaped by innovation and change? This episode explores the intersection of technology, education, and leadership with Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Professor and Vice Dean for Professional Degree Programs at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. Yael shares her insights on the transformative power of AI in education, discussing both the challenges and opportunities it presents for women in the field. She also delves into her personal journey as a woman in leadership, marked by a deep passion for lifelong learning and a commitment to fostering inclusive and innovative educational experiences. Discover how Yael’s leadership is shaping the future of business education and empowering students to thrive in an ever-evolving world.
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Women And AI With Yael Grushka-Cockayne, University Of Virginia Darden School Of Business Vice Dean And AI Lead
We’re going to take a look at AI and the world of business education. Sitting down, I’m speaking with Yael Grushka-Cockayne, who’s a Professor and Vice Dean for Professional Degree Programs at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Yael has such a fascinating background, spending time being raised in both the U.S. and Israel, working around the globe, both in terms of education and professional experience, before landing back in her beloved roots of academia, where she truly shines.
She has been known as a lifelong tutor. It’s been something that started when she was young, and she relied a lot on her perseverance to get her to where she is now. Where is that? Shifting from a professor to the hallowed halls of administration as well in a highly regarded academic institution, which is no small feat, while also leading the way in AI research and so much more. What else more? You have to tune in.
Yael Grushka-Cockayne, Professor and Vice Dean for Professional Degree Programs at the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. Lots to say there. Welcome to Women Advancing.
Thank you so much, Kate. I’m excited to be here and thank you for all your efforts in pushing this initiative forward.
Thank you so much, and especially way to you all who are tuning in here to what Yael has done. There’s a lot of pioneering taking place in a very steady and intentional way. Maybe we all take a page out of her playbook, which we’re going to hear a little bit about shortly. Before we go down that path, let’s start with how you even got to where you are and your whole career journey overall. What sparked this whole passion of yours?
Yael’s Journey: Upbringing, Career Growth, And Important Mentors
It’s a little bit cliché for faculty to say, “When I was a little child,” which many faculty like to say. It is true. My dad was a professor. You can point to him as a very influential person in my life. I always wanted to be a teacher. I have always been a teacher. Many of my friendships were formed based on my being assigned to tutor people, and then we became lifelong friends. It’s always been in there in me. I was in scouts and an instructor.
Every single step along the way, I did military service. I was an instructor in military service. Everything that I did, I ended up with a teaching role. When I got to my undergrad, I did teaching. I was highlighted or spotted as a potential with a good ability to be a teacher because I have an ability to explain complex ideas. I also got to do some research as part of my undergrad, and I enjoyed it. Those two things sat there for me. I was good in the classroom and excited about the research. After a while in the business world, I decided that my calling was back in academia, which got me back to where I am now.
Yael, share with everybody too where you grew up. Where was this taking place?
I grew up in Israel. I was born in the United States, and I moved to Israel as a young child. I grew up there in Jerusalem. My mom is American. My dad was Israeli. We were back and forth while growing up as an academic’s child. We did a few sabbaticals. I have quite an international upbringing. I did my schooling years in Israel, did my military service there, and then did my undergrad in industrial engineering degree there. Pretty much upon graduation, I left. I have been living away ever since. For 25 years now, I’ve been around the world, first in Silicon Valley working for a while. I did my grad school, master’s, and PhD in London, and then at Darden here in Charlottesville for the past 15 or 16 years now.
That is terrific, which gives you such an interesting, broad, and wide-faceted window. You are able to look at a lot of these different subjects in the classroom too, with what I call Dragonfly Eye. Got all sorts of different perspectives, which is fortunate. Your dad was a mentor. Are there any others? Are there any others that fuel your fire?
I’ve been fortunate. I have many amazing mentors both personally and professionally. As you point out, my dad and several of his colleagues have seen me evolve over the years from a young individual. Some of my friend’s parents have been helpful in giving me pointers along the way to things that I would flourish in. Probably most recently and professionally, my advisor for my PhD. I got my PhD from the London Business School.
Professor Bert de Reyck, who is currently the dean in Singapore, is a mentor. He’s been always very encouraging and supportive of my aspirations, my desires, and my research interests. We’ve enjoyed working together, especially when it comes to work and research that is relevant to practice. We’ve done a bunch of consulting projects together that have been research-oriented, with a lot of aerospace companies, aviation organizations, Heathrow Airport, and the pharma sector. He’s been a mentor professionally for me over the years, and we’re very close still. I’m very proud of that relationship.
Most recently here, several of my Darden colleagues have been mentors in different ways. Ed Freeman, a colleague of mine, Mark Lipson, another colleague, Venkat, our senior associate dean for faculty, and Scott, our dean himself have been giving me many opportunities to shine and learn what it is that I want to do when I grow up. I appreciate that a great deal.
From Teaching To Leading: A Seamless Transition
That speaks to your rise in the educational system. Here you are going from professor to administration. What was that like?
It’s a good question.
Going from a single individual contributor to translating it into more of a corporate speak.
It’s been, on one hand, gradual but also instantaneous on the other hand. I’ll try to explain how those two things make sense. Scott has been clever, as others have been around here, at giving me opportunities even before I was formally in the role. Finding ways for me to start to learn the administrative corporate perspective without too much exposure. He invited me to become the faculty representative on our foundation board, which allowed me to be a board member, understanding strategic board responsibility and fiduciary responsibility, and having that outside perspective on what the school has to do to be successful.
I’ve always been very engaged and very hands-on in what I do, even without a formal role. I’m engaged with the students and colleagues. Stepping into administration gave me the permission to do that. That felt good that I was finally getting the recognition and the stature to meet where my energy was going in any event. One of my colleagues often taught me before tenure the statement, “I look forward to the day that I can say yes.” Before tenure, you’re encouraged to focus on your research, focus on things that you know you need to do as an individual contributor.
I was fortunate to say yes to all those things once I got tenure and once I was promoted to full professor because now I can enjoy and indulge in those activities. It’s been mostly pretty seamless. I feel like I have the same relationships with some of my colleagues that I’ve always had and I try to bring my same authentic self. It is true that as an administrator, you see things that you don’t see as an individual contributor. You learn some aspects of the student life that maybe you weren’t exposed to, some aspects of the faculty and your colleagues, and get to work with amazing staff a lot more closely.
As an administrator, you see things that you don't see as an individual contributor. Share on XSome staff now report to me and I’m in charge of their livelihood, their promotion, and their success. That responsibility is new. It was when I stepped into the role five years ago. That was a bit of an adjustment. We’re not trained to be managers and to do that. It’s not obvious that is a simple transition, but I’ve enjoyed it a great deal. I’m lucky to have an incredible staff that I get to work with on a daily basis and make and shape this role.
It’s also a transition not only into those responsibilities but also the interpersonal shift that takes place when you go from being a peer to the boss lady. People can be amazing, but everyone has to go through that adjustment. I know, having both the person who is becoming the boss lady and also the person who is now pointing to that whole notion of this fabulous opportunity of getting to be on a board and understanding the fiduciary piece.
This is something that I’ve been stressing to mentees. How do I break that glass ceiling? You have to run a P&L. You have to be able to speak to the numbers. You don’t need to be a quantum mathematician by any means of the imagination, but you have to be able to be comfortable and understand the business of the business.
Mastering The Numbers: A Key To Leadership
It’s important to have a budget, to understand the main sources of our revenue and our costs and the implications, where we stand, and what are the tensions. Having that inside view into how the school is run is important for my credibility and also for the way that I do my job. Being on the board is just another dimension of that. It helps because the business is complicated, and not everybody has an appetite to do every part of it exactly in the same way.
My background is in operations, research, and industrial engineering. That’s my bachelor’s. Operations research is my master’s. Management, science, and operations is my PhD. I’m very much a logistics person. Even in the military, I was in ordinance. I was a logistics person. That’s a thread that you’ll see throughout. My personal growth is I know how to execute. I can do the numbers.
For me, it’s about how I think bigger. How do I do the visionary stuff? That’s where Scott’s mentorship and role come in, which has been very helpful because, as his reputation precedes him, he is a very visionary dean. He leaves the operations to us, which sometimes can be frustrating, but it is true. It’s understanding what it means to have a visionary leader.
Where can I be inspired by that vision or create my own vision? What does that look like? Justifying that against how things have to get done to meet that vision. Those are things that I’m learning and I continue to learn. My suspicion is that longevity in one role is probably not enough for that. I probably need different roles to see different parts of the business to give me more of that. That’s part of what’s exciting for me and not something that you always get to do as an individual faculty.
You know what’s interesting? I never thought of it this way. I think of people such as yourself. I’ve got a couple of people who have this gift. One of my daughters has this. You mentioned earlier being able to take complex concepts and explain them very easily and simply. In a way, I think of that also as being someone who’s able to communicate and also is good mathematically, poet, and quant. I hadn’t thought of that in terms of leadership being visionary and executionary.
You need to know your strengths. If you don’t have them, then you need to find your partners or your team that complement you. The same thing is true for writing. Back to your previous point, I know that I can do math, but I’m not the most sophisticated statistician. I can do some stats, I can do some math, but I’m not the mathematician in all scenarios. My value to any coauthorship relationship that I have, and I have many different ones, is I typically play the role of that translator, somebody who takes the complex mathematics and can understand them, or can ask the right questions to understand them well.
You need to know your strengths. If you don't have them, then you need to find your partners or your team that does compliment you. Share on XSometimes I can implement them too, but I also have the spectrum and the breadth to take those and to write them up in a way that is clean and accessible and is a joy to read and makes it impactful because then whoever reads it understands it and can use it and leverage it in the future, which makes the work much more impactful longer term. That’s what I bring to coauthorship relationships. If I’m brought in as the mathematical guru, I don’t know that that’s going to benefit our team.
I need to come in, especially for my ability to connect different work streams, to do the translation, to write well, to distill, to ask good questions, and to get the mess away from the main picture. In my coauthorships, that’s what I bring. In my leadership here at Darden, I know that I need to be triggered by people who can take me in different directions and different scenarios. It’s all about how we find people around us that can complement our own skill set.
Cracking The Ceiling: Advice For Female Academics
What advice would you give to the future generation of female academics if they wanted to break in? I don’t know if I would call it a glass ceiling or whatever, but position oneself so that they are standing front in line when these opportunities arise.
A lot of the advice is a tad banal in the sense that there are a lot of things that women get told about ways to break that glass ceiling in different settings. That is true everywhere. For instance, Erika James, Dean at Wharton. In a forum that I was witnessing, I have never forgotten it. She said that when you get that first offer for a job, you think, “I’m not ready for this, I’m not qualified for this, or I don’t have the experience for this.” Of course, you don’t. It’s your first opportunity, but everybody needs a first opportunity because then there will be a second and a third.
Reminding yourself that you have to stand into things and take a little bit of a leap of faith and say it’s okay if this is not my perfect performance, it’s going to be good enough to learn, and I’m going to give it my best shot. The next one will be easier or different in its own right and pivot from there. That’s true for everything in academia. Administration is true, but it’s also true for walking into a new classroom, giving yourself some grace, and saying, “I’m going to try it because I want to learn and grow personally.” That means that it’s going to be bumpy along the way. Not everything is going to be tightened up from the get-go. Some papers are going to get rejected.
It’s just the way it is.
It’s just the way it is, and you’re just going to have to write another paper and try and learn from it and make that next paper even better.
It’s that whole notion of imposter syndrome. It doesn’t exist because when you’re starting something new, you don’t feel like you belong there, but you haven’t done it before. They see something in you, so if they have faith, you better have it in you.
You’re going to have to start with something. That would be my advice. Other advice for women that I think is helpful, I was told pretty early on during my PhD days by someone a few years more advanced than me in her career that it’s all about infrastructure. You have to get your life into a place where you can let your brain focus on what you’re doing. What does that mean to me? I need to know that my kids are happy to the best of my ability. I need to be thinking about the right environment for them, the right way for them to be independent and satisfied, that I don’t have to worry about. I’m always going to worry about them, but I need to know that they’re doing what they should be doing and what they want to be doing.
You have to get your life into a place where you can let your brain focus on what you're doing. Share on XMomentarily, I can let that burden sit there on the shelf for a few hours. I need to know that my house is being taken care of, whatever that means. I need an infrastructure in order to function because if everything is a mess around me, it’s very hard for me to give myself into my job. That’s been the little things. Do I need to pick up the dry cleaning? No, somebody can bring it to me. I know it sounds silly, but that’s the level where I’m debating. If it takes something off my list, I don’t have to worry about it.
Women, AI, And Asking Better Questions
I’m right there with you. It was one of the first things I very quickly figured out. There were going to be certain parts of life that I was completely going to delegate because I wasn’t necessarily particularly great at it, and it was such an energy and time suck. Nothing good was going to come from it if I held on. I also think we start, in an interesting way, seeding our leadership chops because you have to be humble to say, “Can’t do it all.” “Guess what, lucky duck? You get to do that part.” Have fun with that and then move forward. You talked about asking good questions. I know you’re working more with AI. The whole notion of AI, it’s all the query, the power of the prompt. I took that string and I went for it. See? It’s so focused in there.
Good for you.
Talk a little bit. How did you find yourself here? It’s fantastic because there is such a gap between women and AI.
I know that a lot of your passion is also about advancing women in STEM. Funny enough, in the past couple of years, maybe because there’s so much else going on, I feel like women in AI, specifically this question of women in AI are being asked or there is less concern than maybe I heard of ten years ago about women in data science or women in computer science. I feel like, to some degree, and I hope it’s not complacency, but I think there are more prominent women that are in the field, which is giving me some enthusiasm. Having a non-conversation is probably the best world we can live in. It shouldn’t be an issue because there’s enough variety that we don’t have to debate it.
In a way, it’s new, but in a way, for me, it’s not that new. All those years ago, when I studied industrial engineering, I focused on information systems. It was pre-2K. It was in preparation for 2K. We were all nervous that all the computers were going to explode. I got into information systems. I sold enterprise resource planning systems in Silicon Valley for a while. I was in software and business-related software for a long time, including learning coding, programming, some artificial intelligence, and so on. It’s been in my toolkit for a while.
For the bulk of my professor years, in terms of my research, I focused on forecasting, what it means to work with probabilistic forecasts, and how to aggregate the wisdom of the crowd, so multiple forecasts from multiple experts. I’ve done a lot of forecasting, especially in the human expert arena. AI seems very natural to me because a lot of AI is just predictions. They’re very good predictions. They’re machine-driven predictions, but it’s the accuracy of the predictions.
You take everything we know from humans and you take my knowledge of information systems, you put those together and it seems a very comfortable way for me to arrive at AI. It’s not totally disconnected from the stuff I’ve done in the past. That’s where I find myself now. I’m excited about all the new opportunities and developments with the new computing power, the great models, and the companies that are investing. It’s mind-boggling. It’s scary. There are a lot of open questions, but it’s exciting.
I think so too. You’re the first person who has even integrated the notion that it’s crowdsourcing and the humanity aspect behind AI that’s there. Hence, when you look at it that way, it’s a collaborative tool. By the way, you can also reject anything you get from it. There’s the end, which on the one hand, everyone wants the answer, but then they don’t want the accountability of saying, “The computer told me to do it.” “Really? Are you sure about that one?”
Some of my colleagues here at Darden do some interesting work around this. If you challenge people, there are situations where we prefer that a machine tells us what to do. Either we admit it or we don’t admit it. I like how we’re selective. “What? Are we going to be replaced with machines?” “You know what? Hell, yes.” I prefer it because then the error rate will be lower, and I won’t be worried about the poor person who hasn’t slept for fifteen hours who is in the air traffic control tower.
It’s true. There’s an opportunity, but what are some of the obstacles that you see still persisting for women in STEM? What measures can we take to dismantle them and help people power through?
It’s a good question. I will try not to stereotype because everything I say can be caveated. No two women are the same. My challenge is different from your challenge. Some of the challenges for women are challenges for academia in general, which is the pace. Things are happening fast. There’s almost a legitimacy in doing things that are a little bit half-baked. That sometimes goes against some tendencies, like needing to think a little bit or capture my thoughts in a way. When I code, I need to internalize things. I go a little bit slower. Some of us have different preferred paths of learning that allow us to feel comfortable and innovate in our own right.
It’s almost like there’s no patience for that anymore. You have to move. You have to be quick. You have to be fast. That is something that some people find intimidating and a little bit challenging. Hand in hand with is the ability to say, “It’s good enough. Let’s submit this paper as it is because time is of the essence. It could be better, but we can’t constantly be sitting here perfecting it because, by the time we finish it, it will be passé.” Understanding that is going to be critical for people who want to be players. Going back to your question from before, asking good questions. A lot of women are great at asking amazing questions. We’re not always encouraged to do so.
Use your voice.
We’re not always encouraged to question things in a way that doesn’t get criticized in and of itself. “Why are you nitpicking?” or “Why are you giving me a hard time?” It’s like, “No, I’m asking questions.” Finding a way to be inquisitive and ask questions because you need it. As you said, a lot of this prompting is relevant, but also, in order to understand fast-evolving technology, you need to ask a lot of great questions. You need to feel confident in being the one saying, “I want to ask a question. I want to raise my hand.” You need to do that. You have to do that to be a player. That is not always something that I think is natural for everybody.
Ask those questions unapologetically because, at the end of the day, if you don’t, you won’t have the information. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will not land correctly. Something that I have learned repeatedly is that the minute I ask a question, everyone around me has the same question. Think of it as a chance to be courageous and brave for the group.
I’m not the only one who says it, but it’s true in a classroom setting. Let’s take an average lecture setting or group setting. If you have a question, typically, ten other people in the room have it. Give yourself confidence and ask that question. You have to be concentrating on the conversation. You have to be present, you have to engage, and you have to listen well. Active listening is as important. Where it becomes a little bit problematic is when people are using that as an excuse to ask the question they want to ask without sensing the vibe. You still need that EQ. You still need that social orientation to follow conversations, to add, and to contribute, not to take away from them.
Another thing that I think so often is making space and taking space. When you do have something to add, make sure that it is additive as opposed to trying to demonstrate, “I’m smart, too.” You don’t have to do that. We all went to school with those people, someone would ask a question, the teacher would answer it, wait for it, 1, 2, 3. Another person would ask the same question. I’m like, “She just answered that.” Everyone would say, “That’s such a good question.” I’m like, “No, it’s not. We just went through that dumb question. We heard it.” What’s been one of the most surprising or unexpected lessons you’ve learned throughout your work?
Leadership Lessons: Embracing Cohesive Teams
Lessons personally or professionally?
You pick. The truth is, to your point earlier, we make such a point of trying to make sure that those around us are safe and comfortable. They’re hand in hand.
They are hand in hand. Let me try. First, throughout my administrative role, for sure, I’ve learned that there’s a lot of value in cohesive teams and how they show up. They can disagree. We can spend hours and I will challenge my colleagues and my team members one-on-one or in a small group setting to a larger degree. That’s fine. When you are in the bigger setting, there’s this notion of, I think I’ve heard it being expressed as “first team.”
The team has to be the team, and it has to present as a team when it’s in a larger group. There has to be a cohesiveness, not “I disagreed with this, but I went with the committee’s vote.” I find that to be slightly problematic. You can be genuine, you can express your concerns, and you don’t have to hide your opinions. I think it’s hard for a team to function and lead when it’s being pulled in different directions. People can see the cracks because then everybody’s busy opening and widening those cracks, as opposed to progressing, and then everybody gets distracted from the main agenda.
It's really hard for a team to function and lead when it's being pulled in different directions. Share on XFor me, that is apparent how that happens. I can see teams that do that better than others. Finding those mechanisms to express your personal take versus the team’s perspective is important. When you craft your leadership team, finding ways for those voices to be heard and yet still presenting as a cohesive team is fundamental.
I can remember in the early days, someone said to me, “To be a good leader, you have to be a good follower.” It goes to that whole notion of, yes, disagree, fine, debate, then, at the end of the day, align. Move forward and onward we go.
I mentioned this in the context of what we talk about in the classroom as active listening. That’s a tough skill because you need to be okay with sitting back and listening to other people talk, not just letting them talk and ignoring it, but listening so that you understand them. A long time ago, over eleven years ago as we speak, I led a group of students on a NOLS trip. Have you ever done a NOLS trip? I can see that’s something you would love.
No, what is it?
National Outdoor Leadership School.
I would love that.
Maybe you’ve heard of Outward Bound.
Yes, I have.
Those are trips that you go on, and you’re in the wilderness. There are a lot of college-level trips. We did one for Darden for the MBAs. It was only a ten-day trip. Some of these can be three months long. I didn’t have the bandwidth to do that, but eight days was sufficient for me. You’re in the backcountry, there’s no showers, there’s no toilets, you’re cooking all your own meals, you’re sloughing everything on your shoulders. Eight days was more than enough. We went with thirteen students, myself, and an alum, who’s now one of our board members here. We spent eight days in Arizona in January. It was amazing.
Every day, there’s a leader of the day. We’re in small groups of five, walking and navigating from maps and compasses. One of the most valuable personal lessons for me as the only faculty there was an authority, but we had no guides. I was a faculty member. It was forgetting that I’m the faculty, being an active follower, being a team member, not the leader, not somebody who comes in and gives advice.
I was just another team member. I had to be good at being just another team member. That wasn’t that easy for me. I learned that it was valuable because I was distracting. I shouldn’t have been the leader. I should have been a follower. I needed to practice that. That is a dance. How do you step up and lead? How do you let other people lead? What does that mean?
To your point, when you are then that leader, what I experienced was I was better able to build a place where it’s safe to ask questions, and safe to have outcomes that we weren’t expecting, otherwise known as mistakes. We call them learning. It’s okay to do that. Instead of having this shame-and-blame culture, gotcha moments, everyone’s like, “Cool. What did we learn? Great. Let’s keep trying. What would we have done?” Everything becomes less triggering and electric. It’s incredibly important. Taking that now, you’re looking at projects that you’re working on, what’s got you most jazzed?
Pioneering AI Education: What’s Next?
We have a new Institute for AI. You were alluding to that. I have a co-director role in that. I’m super excited about what we’re doing with AI. When I say what we’re doing with AI, the more exciting perhaps is what we could possibly do with AI both in our own instruction. What do we do with it in our own classroom here? Also, how do we think about it in terms of shaping what our students are going to do when they go out and become the MBA leaders of tomorrow? Those managers and leaders in organizations, how do we carve out, or how do we help them identify the possibilities there?
We had an exciting conference in December, asking a lot of great questions about AI leadership and what we call the value chain of ethical AI. How do you add value? Where does value get disrupted or distracted from questionable ethical issues? Also, how do you lead with that mindset? What does it mean around how we teach? I’m super excited about some of our efforts around that.
We have some faculty experimenting with new pedagogy, new curriculum, and new cases. Our students are game to join in with that, some more than others. Some of them want to learn more, and some of them are learning more, being bold, and leading the way. We need to find ways to embrace that. It’s not that I have all the solutions quite yet, but I am excited about the direction.
Are there certain great opportunities for women that you see in that world moving forward? Any of it, AI, all of it?
To be honest, women can take part in any part of the process that they’re interested in. I know exceptional leaders, both in business and in academia, that are at the more technical algorithmic level, leaders in organizations that are asking tough questions around the newest technology, boldly leading the development of new tools and new models, all the way to implementing in the business world, to leading the way and thinking about working in the White House or government and policy around the AI Bill of Rights, and so on. I do think that there are opportunities for women everywhere from policy, academia, and business.
It’s just about us embracing it and not thinking that there are better or worse places for women to find themselves. The more women we have along the way, the better we’ll all be, just because we want great diversity everywhere. We want representation, not just for the sake of representation, I want to be clear. One of the things that we talk a lot about in the wisdom of the crowd research that I do is the value of diversity from a very technical perspective and better forecasts. You can show mathematically that if you take multiple opinions and average them, you’ll be better off than taking somebody on average.
You can show mathematically that more perspectives are valuable for the development of these algorithms, for the implementation of these algorithms, and even for conceptualizing policy. The more we can encourage women to follow their background and their strengths and to position themselves where they’re strong, and where their general tendencies are, the better we will be.
Yael’s Advice To Her Younger Self
Not even question it. In closing, are there any personal philosophies that you think contribute to your success? What advice would you give your younger self, knowing what you know now?
First, never underestimate perseverance. I am a strong believer in perseverance. I am not the smartest, I’m not the fastest, I’m not the strongest, but I am reliable as heck. You know that you can find me. You know that I will do everything I can to be there for you. I’m pretty predictable in many different ways, not in a boring sense. I’m a runner. I’m devoted to my running. I’m devoted to my teaching. I’m devoted to my work. I am consistent, and I am devoted, and I am ruthless, not day in, day out.
That helps me. It helps me keep pace because my pace is a little bit too much. Maybe I should calm it down a little bit, but it helps me have a rhythm. I’m a rhythm person. That rhythm benefits me. I need that in my life. I fly a lot, I travel a lot. When I get to a place, I go out for a run. I anchor myself to get into a routine because that is good for me. That perseverance plays out well professionally in my mind. It helped me. I haven’t always been successful. As I mentioned, courses haven’t always been that good. I failed. Papers get rejected.
I didn’t do good on some of the standardized testing early on. I also have certain aspects of dyslexia, whatever it is, but persevere and try again. No extremes. Don’t do everything too crazy amounts and then put every single thing, but do it regularly and religiously. That’s been very good for me. Perseverance, I think I always had it. Maybe my younger self would laugh at me because it was there too. It has played out well for me over time.
You have great personal accountability to yourself. Despite all that others might say, “Go do this, do this,” it’s like, I know I need to ground myself and get myself there, then I can give. You also have a tremendous amount of energy. I share this with you. I know for myself I need to do that because if I don’t harness that and if I don’t workout or I don’t burn it off in that way, hell will break loose. It’s an ugly thing. No one will be spared.
Maybe people will say that this is not true, but my feeling is that there’s a little bit of I only take myself so seriously. The research, the teaching, the classroom, even to some degree in my personal life, and I love my family, and I love my mom and my sisters, and I’m dedicated to them. There’s a tendency to overthink. I hit 50 this year. A lot of people have a lot to say about being over 50. There’s this whole notion of being in your head and going through scenarios like that’s going to happen and it happens.
I let that happen to some degree, but I can’t take myself too seriously because, at some point, it’s not helpful. It then becomes harmful. I need to know how to release it. With that release comes a little bit of life is a roller coaster. You have to laugh and smile because not all problems are welcome. Some things do need to be solved. I will work hard to solve them. At the moment, it’s not going to be the end of the world, because it can’t be. Otherwise, I won’t wake up tomorrow.
I need to put things in perspective. Scott appointed me to be Senior Associate Dean in May 2020. If you think about what was going on that weekend, everything, social justice in the United States, COVID, grumpy students, grumpy faculty, grumpy world, it was a tough time. I learned pretty quickly the day after that you have to take things with a pinch of salt and not too seriously, otherwise, it will haunt you. That was helpful.
That’s sage advice for everybody. I’m going to come back. We’re going to continue this conversation because there are a few other in-depth things. Thank you so much, on behalf of myself, Women Advancing, and our audience. I cannot wait to see so many of your students stand up and spread their wings and how that results in a world that flourishes for all. I appreciate everything you had to share.
Thank you for inviting me. I enjoyed chatting with you. I’m excited about all the things that you’re going to do with all of your efforts as well.
Thanks.
Important Links
- Kate Byrne on LinkedIn
- Yael Grushka-Cockayne on LinkedIn
- Erika James on LinkedIn
- University of Virginia Darden School of Business
- NOLS
About Yael Grushka-Cockayne
Landmark Communication Incorporated Professor of Business Administration, Vice Dean for Professional Degree Programs, Academic Co-Director of the LaCross Institute for AI.
Professor Yael Grushka-Cockayne’s research and teaching activities focus on data science, artificial intelligence, forecasting, project management and behavioral decision-making. Her research is published in numerous academic and professional journals, and she is a regular speaker at international conferences in the areas of decision analysis, project management and management science.
Prof. Grushka-Cockayne is an award-winning teacher, winning the Darden Morton Leadership Faculty Award in 2011, the University of Virginia’s Mead-Colley Award in 2012, the Darden Outstanding Faculty Award in 2013 and 2022, University of Virginia All University Teaching Award in 2015, the Faculty Diversity Award in 2013 and 2018, and the Transformational Faculty Award in 2024. Prof. Grushka-Cockayne teaches the core “Decision Analysis” course, an elective she designed on project management, an elective on data science and a new course on coding with ChatGPT.
Before starting her academic career, she worked in San Francisco as a marketing director of an ERP company. As an expert in the areas of project management, Prof. Grushka-Cockayne has served as a consultant to international firms in the aerospace and pharma industries. She is a UVA Excellence in Diversity fellow and a member of INFORMS, the President of the Decision Analysis Society, and a member of the Operational Research Society and the Project Management Institute (PMI). She serves as an associate editor at Management Science Operation Research.
Grushka-Cockayne was named one of “21 Thought-Leader Professors” in Data Science. Her course “Fundamentals of Project Planning and Management” Coursera MOOC has over 300,000 enrolled, across 200 countries worldwide. Her “Data Science for Business” Harvard Online course, launched in 2021, has taught hundreds of learners around the world.