Team
Management | Center Scholars & Executives | COLE Leadership Fellows
| Sim B. Sitkin | Faculty Director | Tejumade Ajasa | Assistant Director |
| Sanyin Siang | Managing Director | Danielle Kowalczuk | Program Coordinator |
| Jim Emery | Research Director | Karin Douglas | Associate Director, Development |
Sim B. Sitkin,
Faculty Director
Sim Sitkin holds appointments as Professor of Management, Founding Faculty Director of the Center on Leadership and Ethics, and Director of the Center for Organizational Research. Previously at Duke, Sim served as Area Head of the Management and Organizations Area, Academic Director at Duke Corporate Education and Director of the Health Sector Management Program. Sim is a Founding Partner of Delta Leadership, Inc. and holds an appointment as Professor of Organization Science at the Free University of Amsterdam, where he is a Fellow in the Centre of Comparative Social Studies.
Sim's research focuses on leadership and control systems and their influence on how organizations and their members become more or less capable of change and innovation. He is widely known for his research on the effect of formal and informal organizational control systems and leadership on risk taking, accountability, trust, learning from failure, M&A processes, and innovation. He has published over 80 books, book chapters, and academic and practitioner journal articles. His forthcoming Cambridge University Press book, Control in organizations: New directions in theory and research, is co-edited with Laura Cardinal and Katinka Bijlsma-Frankema.
He has served in editorial roles for several leading journals and on a number of editorial boards and agency review panels in the U.S. , Canada , and Australia and on the board of directors of the Society of Organizational Learning and the Center for the Public Domain. He served on the Board of Governors of the Academy of Management , as Senior Editor of Organization Science, and Associate Editor of the Journal of Organizational Behavior . He currently serves on the Advisory Board for the EuroMed Business Research Centre.
Sim has extensive consulting and executive education experience with many large and small corporations, non-profit and government organizations worldwide. In this work, he has focused on strategic leadership, leading and managing change (including mergers and acquisitions), organizational learning and knowledge management, and the design of organizational control systems. He has worked with a number of large and small corporations, and nonprofit and government organizations concerned with education, employment and social services - including ABB, Alcoa, American Airlines, Areva, Baker Tilly, bioMerieux, Carolina Power & Light, Cisco Systems, Compaq Computer, Corning, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutschebank, Duke Medical Center, Ericsson, Glaxo, Hart Graphics, IBM, La Quinta, Maxcor, Omgeo, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Red Hat Software, R.H. Donnelley, Siemens, URS, U.S. Dept of Justice (FBI, DEA), and Xerox Corporation.
Before joining the faculty of Duke University in 1994, Sim was on the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin and has been a visiting scholar at Carnegie Mellon University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford University, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, and the University of Queensland. Prior to obtaining his PhD in organizational behavior from Stanford University , Sim spent over ten years in a variety of executive roles with responsibility for planning, information technology, financial administration, and research in consulting, non-profit, and government organizations.
Sanyin Siang, Managing Director and Sr. Research Associate
Sanyin Siang is managing director and sr. research associate of the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) at Duke University. The center is committed to influencing the way that scholars and executives think about and practice ethical leadership in the 21^st century. It does so by facilitating the exchange of best practices among leaders and engages scholars in cutting-edge research.
Sanyin has a mix of experiences in management, ethics, policy, and journalism. She has served as the Deputy Editor the /Professional Ethics Report of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (the world's largest federation of scientific and engineering societies), and was also the Associate Online Editor for the American Bar Association's Science & Technology Law Section Newsletter. She also was also an editorial board member and ethics expert for the journal, Clinical Researcher, and also as contributing editor and writer to several publications including IEEE Spectrum, Science Magazine, Elvesier's HMS Beagle, and PINK Magazine. She was a co-editor for the special issue of the Leader to Leader Journal (published by the Leader to Leader Institute and Wiley & Sons).
She has spoken on leadership, ethics, and science policy to different groups including MIT Sloan School of Business, The Opt-In Project, American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Center for Creative Leadership, Kent School of Law, Claremont College , and Trinity College . She was an ethics mentor with West Point's 2006 National Conference on Ethics in America . In 2004, she was nominated and selected to be a civilian member of the US Army War College's National Security Seminar. She also serves as a leadership coach to executives in private industry and public agencies.
Sanyin received her MBA and BSE from Duke University. She received Duke's Angier B Duke Scholarship (full academic scholarship) in her undergraduate years.
Jim Emery, Research Director 
James (Jim) Emery holds a PhD in Business (Management) from the Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. He also holds an M.B.A. from Fuqua and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Virginia Tech. Jim's research interests in leadership and learning emerged from years of management consulting work with health care organizations. His dissertation examined how personal loyalty emerges in leader-follower relationships and how loyalty affects subsequent follower behavior, including approaches to dissent. Currently, he is also working on research projects exploring inspirational leadership and the role of vision in leadership.
Jim is the Research Director at the Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics (COLE) and an Instructor at Fuqua where he has taught the Power and Politics elective course in the daytime M.B.A. program and a business principles course to graduate students in Duke's Nicholas School of the Environment. He has also been a leadership coach to executives in private industry and public agencies over the past four years.
Tejumade Ajasa,
Assistant Director
Tejumade Ajasa joined COLE in 2004. As the assistant director, she manages projects, programs and activities that support COLE's mission. Her portfolio includes building and managing business relationships and center communications, financial reporting and budget reconciliation. Throughout her career at COLE, Ajasa has enjoyed the special challenges of meeting the needs of the center in its early stages of growth and development. She has been critical in the launch and success of many of the initiatives COLE has undertaken - most notably the annual Fuqua/Coach K Leadership Conference and COLE's annual International Dissertation Competition.
Prior to working at Fuqua, she has worked in various offices in London and Nigeria, in positions dealing with customer relations and project management.
Ajasa holds a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science. She is a certified Administrative Professional and is a professional member of the International Association of Administrative Professionals (IAAP).
Daniell
e Kowalczuk, Program Coordinator
Danielle Kowalczuk joined COLE in 2007. As the Program Coordinator, she is the center's lead on graphic design projects and public relations. She also works on a variety of programs within COLE's growing portfolio, with a focus on the Women's Leadership Initiative (WLEAD); student programs; the New Directions in Leadership Research Conference; and coordination of advertising and marketing, along with staffing volunteers for the FSB & Coach K Leadership Conference.
Kowalczuk comes to Duke from Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, LA, where she earned her Bachelor's Degree in Mass Communications with concentrations in Public Relations and Advertising.
She is a volunteer at the North Carolina Jaycee Burn Center, and sits on the planning committee for the burn center's annual Camp Celebrate. In addition, she is a member of the Phoenix Society's Survivors Offering Assistance in Recovery (SOAR).
Prior to COLE, Kowalczuk worked as a public relations intern at a nonprofit organization, and a gymnastics coach and judge. She was a member of the Marine Corps Platoon Leaders Course at LSU, and the National Society of Collegiate Scholars.
Karin Douglas, Associate Director, Development
Contact the Center
For general Center information or for specific questions, please contact
Email: colecenter@duke.edu
Phone: 919-660-7992
Fax: 919-681-6244
Mailing address
The Fuqua/Coach K Center on Leadership & Ethics
The Fuqua School of Business
1 Towerview Drive
Durham, NC 27708-0120
USA