Owning Your Influence: Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh (Associate Professor of Marketing)
Anastasiya Pocheptsova Ghosh encourages faculty to embrace their power, and she is leading by example.
Ghosh is associate professor of marketing in the Eller College of Management at the University of Arizona, Susan and Philip Hagenah Endowed Faculty Fellow, Chair of Eller’s College Advisory Committee (CAC) and Chair of the Faculty. During the 2021-2022 academic year, Ghosh participated in the Inclusive Leadership Insitute offered through the University’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI). ODI brings together faculty, staff and graduate students across campus to explore concepts like intercultural competency, allyship and community building and learn how to integrate them into the policies and programs within their respective unit, department or college.
“It really opens up your eyes to a lot of different opinions on diversity and inclusion that exist on campus,” says Ghosh. “It was interesting to see where different colleges were with different problems.”
In addition to monthly meetings, Ghosh and the other participants each lead their own “Project for Change”—an initiative of their choosing that would advance the University’s commitment to inclusive excellence.
“The cool part about that program was you got a mentor from central administration to lead you through your project and give you feedback on the issues you might be experiencing,” she says. “That was also a nice way to make campus connections.”
Ghosh’s project was developing a series of trainings and workshops called Together at Eller, which bring experts from UArizona and other institutions together with Eller faculty to share knowledge about diversity, equity and inclusion topics. After piloting the first event in fall 2021 that discussed inclusion and retention issues for women and underrepresented groups at business schools, Ghosh secured commitment from Eller leadership to make the series ongoing, one event per term. The events for the 2022-2023 academic year are Together at Eller: Culturally Responsive Curriculum on November 4, 2022 and Together at Eller: Inclusive Teaching on February 17, 2023.
Ghosh hopes these events will provide Eller faculty with the resources and knowledge to cultivate a culture of inclusivity and belongingness at Eller, a mission that is close to her heart.
“Being a young female faculty in business schools, often I didn’t feel like I belong,” says Ghosh. “That’s not right and it's actually completely up to us – faculty, staff, all of us – to change that.”
After completing the Inclusive Leadership Institute, ODI selected Ghosh to be a Campus Inclusive Facilitator and hold meetings where all members of the UArizona campus community may come together to discuss a topic of her choosing. Ghosh will facilitate her learning collaboratives in spring 2023 on the topic of effective mentorship.
“It would be fantastic to have some of our faculty participate,” she says. “We are a big college, we have opinions, those should be heard.”
More information on Ghosh’s learning collaborative sessions will be released soon.
Inspired by her collaboration with ODI, Ghosh also uses her role as Chair of the Faculty and CAC Chair to invite the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Faculty Governance Committee to review plans for major Eller initiatives and assess any potential implications for diversity, equity and inclusion at the college.
“A lot of things—everyday things—are in our hands. Our search committees, faculty governance, how we interact with students in a classroom, who gets invited to give presentations and talks,” says Ghosh. “There are so many micro decisions that we make as faculty and if you look at them all together, we have a lot of power.”