Taking leadership to a new level

Scott Barclay

Director of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences

New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences

Scott Barclay is a Professor and Director of the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences in the New College of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University. He received his PhD in Political Science from Northwestern University and his BA from the University of Queensland in Australia. He recently served as a Program Director in the Social Behavioral and Economic Sciences Directorate at the National Science Foundation, where he was a program officer for the Law and Science (LS) Program and the Resource Implementations for Data Intensive Research (RIDIR) Program as well as an SBE representative on the CAREER Coordinating Committee. He has held positions at Drexel University; University of California, Los Angeles; University of California, Santa Cruz; University of Washington; and University at Albany SUNY.

His ongoing research project explores the interplay of political, demographic, and social movement factors that influence the deployment of law. He previously considered how these factors shaped the timing and nature of policies on lesbian and gay rights at the state and national level in the United States, including leading a big data project hosted by UCLA Law School that gathered 45 years of proprietary public opinion data from the 60 major lesbian and gay rights groups. He was a co-founder of the Law and Society Association’s Collaborative Research Network on Law and Social Movements. His research has been published in Law & Society Review, Law & Social Inquiry, Political Research Quarterly, Perspectives on Politics, and Law and Policy. His research findings have been directly referenced in the New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times.

Andy Call

Director of the School of Accountancy

W.P. Carey School of Business

Andy Call is a professor of accounting in the W. P. Carey School of Business and the Director of the School of Accountancy at Arizona State University. He graduated with a Ph.D. from the University of Washington, after earning his MAcc and B.S. degrees in accounting at Brigham Young University. Professor Call was previously on the faculty at the University of Georgia, joined the W. P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University in 2013, and became the Director of the School of Accountancy in 2018.

Professor Call’s research focuses primarily on two broad themes. First, he researches employee whistleblowers and their involvement in the discovery of financial misreporting. Whistleblowers have long been considered a useful source of information about corporate malfeasance, and in recent years Congress has passed legislation providing financial rewards for those who provide regulators with helpful information about corporate wrongdoing. Professor Call is one of the leading academic researchers in this area, providing large-sample evidence that whistleblower involvement in Securities and Exchange Commission investigations helps the federal government extract larger fines and penalties against guilty firms and executives. His research also suggests that misreporting firms actively discourage their employees from blowing the whistle.

Second, he examines the activities of Wall Street analysts and their impact on the capital markets. Sell-side analysts provide projections of future stock returns and earnings information, sharing this and other information with investors and other market participants. Professor Call uses both large-sample evidence and survey data to shed light on a variety of topics, including the stock market impact of analysts’ research, the usefulness of their research in debt markets, and analysts’ role in companies’ public earnings conference calls.

His research has been published in leading academic journals, including Journal of Accounting and Economics, Journal of Accounting Research, The Accounting Review, and Review of Accounting Studies, and has been featured in many prominent media outlets (e.g., The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, CFO Magazine, The Motley Fool, and CNBC). Professor Call has taught financial reporting topics to both undergraduate and graduate students and has received numerous teaching awards.

Nicole Darnall

Associate Dean and Professor

School of Sustainability

Nicole Darnall is associate dean and professor of management and public policy in ASU's School of Sustainability. She is also a co-founder and team leader of ASU’s Sustainable Purchasing Research Initiative, and a senior sustainability scholar at the Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability.

Her research assesses non-regulatory sustainability governance approaches: voluntary programs, strategic alliances, certifications, and information-based initiatives. Her work investigates whether the absence of state coercion, combined with appropriate incentives, can encourage organizations and individuals to be more environmentally sustainable.

Professor Darnall is a National Academy of Public Administration Fellow, an Economic and Social Research Council and Social Science Research Council Collaborative Visiting Fellow, an Erasmus Mundus International Scholar, a Social Science Research Council Abe Fellow, and Spanish Ministry of Education International Fellow. She has received the Academy of Management's Organizations and Natural Environment Emerging Scholar Award for research excellence and its Best Paper Award. Her research on business-government collaborations received the Academy of Management Public and Nonprofit Management’s Best Journal Article Award, and her scholarship on environmental audits received the Decision Science Institute's Distinguished Paper Award.

Professor Darnall has served as a senior editor of Production and Operations Management and associate editor of Business & Society and Organization and Environment. She is on the Editorial Review Board of Cambridge University Press, Public Administration Review, Business & Society, Organization and Environment, and Business Strategy and the Environment. She is a founding member of the Group of Organizations and Natural Environment (GRONEN), a network of European and North American scholars focused on organization sustainability. Prior to her career in academia she worked as an economist for the U.S. Forest Service.

Jon Gould

Director of School of Criminology

College of Public Service and Community Solutions

Jon Gould is Foundation Professor of Criminal Justice and Law and Director of the School of Criminology and Criminal Justice. An internationally known expert on justice policy, social change, and government reform, he is the author of four books and over 50 articles on such diverse subjects as erroneous convictions, indigent defense, prosecutorial innovation, police behavior, hate speech, sexual harassment, and international human rights, among others. An award-winning scholar, Gould’s research has been supported by more than $3.2 million in external funding and has been cited in multiple court pleadings and judicial decisions.

He is regularly called upon to serve as a consultant to governments and non-governmental organizations alike, both domestically and abroad. Prior to coming to ASU, Gould was inaugural director of the Washington Institute for Public Affairs Research and professor and chair of the Department of Justice, Law and Criminology at American University and, before that, associate professor and director of the Center for Justice Law and Society at George Mason University. He served as the principal investigator for the Preventing Wrongful Convictions Project, a multi-year research initiative funded by the National Institute of Justice. Most recently, Gould served as a Senior Policy Advisor in the U.S. Department of Justice during the Obama Administration and was a director of the Law and Social Sciences Program at the National Science Foundation.

Professor Gould is a Fellow of the American Bar Foundation and is a former U.S. Supreme Court Fellow. He has served on multiple non-profit boards and has been a trustee of the Law and Society Association. In 2015, U.S. Chief Justice John Roberts appointed him as reporter for a committee of the federal courts evaluating the operation of the Criminal Justice Act. Professor Gould received the Administration of Justice Award from the U.S. Supreme Court Fellows Association in 2017.

Joanna Grabski

Director and Professor of the School of Art

Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts

Joanna Grabski is Director and Professor of the School of Art, Professor of Art History, and the Katherine K. Herberger Endowed Chair in Fine Arts. Prior to her appointment at Arizona State University, she held faculty and leadership positions at Denison University, including serving as Chair of Art History and Visual Culture as well as Director of the Grand Challenge Initiative and the Internationalization Innovation Initiative. She earned her Ph.D. in Art History and African Studies from Indiana University.

She has published extensively on contemporary artists, expressive culture, and urban life in Dakar, Senegal. Her book, Art World City: The Creative Economy of Artists and Urban Life in Dakar (IU Press, 2017) examines the intersection of Dakar’s art scene, urbanization, and art world globalization. Her documentary film, Market Imaginary (IU Press, 2013), focuses on Dakar’s storied Colobane Market as a site for transforming used objects. Following its Dakar premiere, the film was screened at several institutions in the USA, Europe, and Africa. She is also co-editor of the book, African Art, Interviews, Narratives: Bodies of Knowledge at Work (IU Press 2013). She has contributed to several edited collections and academic journals including African Arts, Art Journal, Fashion Theory, Nka, Présence Francophone, Social Dynamics, and Africa Today.

Among her honors, awards, and fellowships are the Art Journal Award and the Millard Meiss Award from the College Art Association, the Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship, the Smithsonian Institution Doctoral Fellowship, the GLCA New Directions Initiative Grant made possible by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and the Mellon Digital Scholarship Faculty Award. 

She is working on two new projects about artists and art worlds: the Global Art School Futures Initiative, a project focused on the role of art schools in forming globally oriented artists for the 21st century; and the Arizona Artists’ Oral History Project, a digital archive of interviews created with Arizona’s artists. 

Zach Kramer

Associate Dean of Faculty

Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law

I am Associate Dean of Faculty, Professor of Law, and Mary Sigler Distinguished Research Scholar at Arizona State’s Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law. My primary duties involve the faculty experience, from hiring and mentoring, to research support and promotion & tenure. As is often the case with administrative jobs, my job has ballooned to reach lots of areas of the law school beyond faculty. At the law school, I am involved in admissions and recruitment, student experience (with a special focus on students in crisis), diversity initiatives, staffing and budgeting, marketing and communications, and just putting out lots of small fires that pop up in the regular course of things.

In recent years, my external relations portfolio has grown substantially, which has me working closely with the law school’s development team. I also oversee the law school’s relationship with several other academic units at ASU. This past summer, I served as Interim Dean of the law school while our dean was out on medical leave.

In addition to my administrative duties, I also teach and write in the areas of Civil Rights Law and Property Law, though I don’t do much teaching these days. My first book, Outsiders: Why Difference is the Future of Civil Rights, was published by Oxford University Press in the spring of 2019.

I earned a B.A. from the University of Wisconsin and a J.D. from the University of Illinois, where I served as the editor-in-chief of the University of Illinois Law Review. My first academic position was at UCLA School of Law, where I served as the inaugural Williams Teaching Fellow. I then held tenure-track positions at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and Penn State University. I joined the faculty at ASU in 2010. I previously served as the College’s Associate Dean of Intellectual Life.

Trisalyn Nelson

School Director and Professor

School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning

Trisalyn Nelson is a Foundation Professor and director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. Through her research her team develops and uses spatial and spatial-temporal analyses to address applied questions in a wide range of fields from ecology to health. She has studied mountain pine beetle infestations, grizzly bears, and environmental change. Currently, her research focuses on active transportation, and the use of big data and analytics to better plan cities. Nelson led the creation of BikeMaps.org, a web-map and App to gather volunteered geographic information on cycling collisions and near misses. With her team, she has developed new ways of using fitness app data (like Strava) to create maps of bicycling volume useful for transportation planning. Nelson's uses BikeMaps.org and other big data to quantify and monitor patterns of urban cycling safety and ridership.

In 2016, Dr. Nelson joined ASU as the director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning. She came from the University of Victoria in Canada where she has been a professor and director of the Spatial Pattern Analysis and Research Lab.

In her leadership role, Dr. Nelson is passionate about creating a good culture. She values partnerships, particularly connection between industry and academics, that enable innovation of methods and approaches to solving critical issues. She has worked with over a dozen partners to leverage data science methods for business and management solutions. Dr. Nelson committed to finding new ways to tell stories about the amazing work happening all around us. She is the host of a new podcast Earth + Humans. She is also a first-generation student committed the access mission of ASU.

Brian Nelson

Associate Division Director and Professor

Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College

Brian C. Nelson is a professor and Associate Director of the Division of Educational Leadership and Innovation with the Mary Lou Fulton Teachers College. He also serves as the Chair of the Learning, Literacies, and Technologies PhD program committee. Dr. Nelson’s research focuses on the theory, design, and implementation of immersive learning and assessment environments.

Professor Nelson was the project designer on the River City Virtual World project through two National Science Foundation (NSF) funded studies, and co-principal investigator on the NSF-funded SAVE Science and SURGE studies. Each of these studies explored the use of computer games to teach and assess science inquiry and content. He recently completed the NSF project called Ask Dr. Discovery. Nelson collaborated on this project with Judd Bowman, cosmologist in the School of Earth and Space Exploration at ASU, Cassie Bowman, a scientist and educator with NASA; and staff from the Arizona Science Center and Arizona Museum of Natural History. The mobile app is designed so that visitors can use to ask questions and enhance their experience with science exhibits at the two museums.

Dr.  Nelson was also Co-PI on two MacArthur Foundation Digital Learning grants: “21st Century Assessment” and “Our Courts”. In 21st Century Assessment, he collaborated with an interdisciplinary team to formulate and disseminate innovative models for assessment of learning in digital environments. In Our Courts, he collaborated on the design of games to help high school students learn about the U.S. court system.

Dr. Nelson is committed to strengthening the computational literacy of K-12 students and teachers in Arizona. He is co-founder and co-director of Computer Science for Arizona, a statewide computer science initiative focused on bringing computer science education and professional development statewide. CSforAZ brings together a coalition of partners from government, K-12 districts, higher education, business, and non-profits; all focused on enabling high-quality, equitable computer science learning opportunities for all students in Arizona.

Grace O'Sullivan

Vice President

Knowledge Enterprise

Grace O’Sullivan serves as Vice President of Corporate Engagement and Strategic Partnerships for Arizona State University’s Knowledge Enterprise. She possesses 15 years of experience in higher education and more than a decade of experience cultivating mutually beneficial public-private partnerships on behalf of ASU, the most innovative school in the country.

In her time with the university, Grace has held numerous senior leadership roles at the enterprise and institute level including advancing research for ASU’s Biodesign Institute, the largest single investment in research infrastructure in the state of Arizona. She also created the university’s Corporate Engagement Network which has greatly expanded since its inception.

As a native Phoenician, Grace has a deep passion for the Greater Phoenix area and its residents and is an active member of the community. She has worked with numerous non-profit organizations in the arts, education, civil rights, and animal welfare. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for Terros Health, a non-profit, integrated care provider that specializes in medical care, wellness interventions, trauma-informed mental health, and addiction recovery.

Presently, as Vice President at ASU, Grace designs and launches comprehensive engagements with the private sector as well as with strategic health partnerships that span talent development, custom curriculum programs, Research and Development, business attraction, and economic development.

She is a proud alumna of ASU having earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Justice Studies and an MBA from the school’s W.P. Carey School of Business.

Jessica Pucci

Assistant Dean

Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication

As assistant dean, Jessica Pucci leads the school’s Digital Audiences programs, including curriculum development across the Digital Audiences degree programs and oversight of the Digital Audiences Lab. She also leads the school’s executive education programs and synergies that leverage the school’s expertise in audience growth, engagement and measurement, including partnerships with the NCAA Final Four, and the award-winning Electionland project. She teaches courses in digital strategy, analytics and audience engagement, and manages client relations for the agency-style capstone experience, Digital Audience Growth.

Prior to her current role, Pucci served as director of Digital Audience Programs and director of the Cronkite News social media team. Previously, Pucci directed brand journalism, social media and engagement for large national home-design and retail clients at the communications agency Manifest, formerly McMurry/TMG. She directed content strategy and execution for clients such as Bed Bath & Beyond.

Pucci has worked in magazine journalism, serving as a managing editor and later a digital editor for DRAFT Magazine. There, she directed editorial content and oversaw social media, while orchestrating print-to-web story packaging. Her work also has appeared in Robb Report, Money magazine and HGTV Magazine, among others.

Pucci holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri, where her research focused on journalism ethics. She earned her bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Wisconsin.

Ryan Shaw

Managing Director of Strategic Initiatives and Senior Advisor to President Crow

University Affairs

Ryan Shaw joins the Office of the President after a highly successful career in the U.S. Army. He earned his commission from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, where he majored in American Politics. After early service as an armor officer—including commanding a cavalry troop in the Anbar Province of Iraq—he earned an MA in History from Yale University and returned to West Point as an Assistant Professor of American History. Ryan then spent the latter half of his career as an Army Strategist, leading strategic planning and assessment efforts and providing strategic advice to leaders at the highest levels of U.S. and multi-national military organizations.

At NORAD and U.S. Northern Command, he led planning for DoD support to civil authorities for disasters such as the Southern California earthquake and Gulf Coast hurricane scenarios. He also served as strategic advisor to the Commander, supporting efforts across the mission sets of homeland defense, civil support, and military relations with Canada, Mexico, and the Bahamas.

Ryan served as Deputy Chief of Plans and Assessments in the Office of the United States Security Coordinator for Israel and the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem. In this capacity, he led a revision of the multinational strategy for support to the Palestinian Authority Security Forces and the first-ever assessment program for international endorsement of PASF capabilities. He was also strategic advisor to the three-star Security Coordinator, supporting all engagements with the U.S. Government, the Government of Israel, the Palestinian Authority, and international donors.

Most recently, Ryan was Special Assistant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. He served as lead planner and author for the Chairman’s communications with domestic and foreign audiences, including Congressional testimony and Presidential advice. He also directed and contributed to special projects including a seminal “failure assessment” of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan and a review of civilian casualties in the counter-ISIS campaign.

A graduate of strategic education programs at Yale University and the U.S. Army War College, Ryan is a doctoral candidate at Yale and has published in the fields of grand strategy, strategic theory, and history.

Eric Spicer

Executive Director of Development

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Eric Spicer is the Executive Director of Development for The College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. In this role, he provides leadership to The College development team and works to secure principal and transformational level philanthropic investments to advance the mission of The College.

Eric has 18 years of development experience in the Phoenix nonprofit sector. He began his career with the Celebrity Fight Night Foundation raising support for the Muhammad Ali Parkinson Center at the Barrow Neurological Institute. Before joining the ASU Foundation in 2009, Eric was the Director of Development for Ronald McDonald House Charities of Phoenix. Prior to his current role, Eric held the position of Senior Director of Development overseeing all development activities for ASU’s College of Nursing and Health Innovation, College of Health Solutions, and the Biodesign Institute.

He has been an active volunteer in the Phoenix community, primarily working with organizations that provide support services to children in the Arizona foster care system. He was a founding board member for Hope & A Future and currently serves as a board member for Firm Foundation Youth Homes. Eric is a graduate of Valley Leadership’s Class 29 Leadership Institute, and in 2019, he was selected as a member of the Phoenix Business Journal’s 40 Under 40. Additionally, he holds a Master’s degree from ASU in Nonprofit Leadership and Management and is a Certified Fundraising Executive.

Ann Toca

Managing Director and Deputy VP

Marketing HUB

Ann Toca joined the Hub in November 2013 as the office's first executive appointment under CMO Dan Dillon. She oversees the development and implementation of brand strategies that build and advance ASU brand strength, including the launch and implementation of the Core Brand Group to improve brand engagement and perceptions. She works closely with the Hub's knowledge and insights team to identify constituent research priorities and integrate insights into the Hub's marketing and communications strategies. Ann has oversight of media buying, marketing technologies, marketing partnerships and sponsorships, affinity platforms, the Alumni Engagement and Impact Office and the Hub’s support operations including HR, finance and IT.

Prior to joining the Hub, Toca led an ASU Foundation team responsible for development communications and media relations strategies. In that capacity, she worked with design visionary Bruce Mau in 2008 on the creation of ASU's brand look and feel and published the precursor to today's brand guidelines.

Toca's professional background includes more than 20 years in consumer-packaged goods organizations and marketing and advertising agencies prior to joining ASU in 2006. She is a summa cum laude graduate of ASU W. P. Carey School of Business, earning a bachelor of science degree in marketing.

Jameson Wetmore

Associate Director for Academic Programs and Associate Professor

School for the Future of Innovation in Society

Jamey Wetmore is an associate professor in the School for the Future of Innovation in Society (SFIS) and co-director of the Center for Engagement and Training in Science and Society. His work combines the fields of science and technology studies, ethics, and public policy in order to better understand both the interconnected relationships between technology and society and the forces that change those relationships over time. His research spans a broad array of topics including the Amish use of technology, emerging nanotechnologies, automated vehicles, and automobile safety, but most of it comes back to a recurring question: How do people design and create technological systems and, in turn, how do these technological systems help to define, reinforce and propagate specific values? He is currently “Associate Director for Societal and Ethical Implications” of the National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure, a nationwide network of nanotechnology labs funded by the National Science Foundation. He also works closely with the Desert Botanical Garden as a trustee to develop new education and engagement programs.

He has been on the faculty at ASU since 2006, initially with the Consortium for Science, Policy & Outcomes and the School of Human Development and Social Change, with a shift to SFIS when it was created in 2015. He spearheaded the effort to develop undergraduate programs for SFIS and ran them for three years. This year he serves as SFIS Interim Deputy Director and Associate Director for Programs (overseeing 4 undergrad programs, 2 PhDs, and 3 Masters programs) and Interim Deputy Director.  Jamey runs annual workshops at ASU’s DC office that introduce PhD science and engineering students to science policy and broader social issues in general.  He frequently teaches large undergraduate courses at SFIS, including “Technology and Society” and “Welcome to the Future.  And he is active in study abroad. He recently led ASU’s first Antarctica program and with that trip can claim having taught ASU programs on all seven continents.  He is currently developing a program to take students to next year’s World’s Fair: Dubai2020.

Christina Wombacher

Associate Athletics Director

University Affairs

 Christina Wombacher has been an Associate Athletic Director for the Sun Devils since August of 2019 and has been a key player of the Senior Management Team and primary staff resource to the Vice President for University Athletics since 2015. Along with serving as the lead sport administrator for the women’s lacrosse team, Wombacher also serves as the secondary sport administrator for the Women’s Basketball team and Women’s Beach Volleyball team. She has hosted and organized many special projects that have elevated Sun Devil Athletics culture which include hosting various constituents and conferences in athletics, managing various internal and external partnership relationships, assisted with marketing and affinity strategies, fundraising events and student-athlete experience planning. 

Prior to her rise to Associate Athletic Director, Wombacher led a successful career for 14 years with the Sun Devil women’s basketball program, serving as the administrative assistant and then director of operations. Wombacher planned, organized and maintained the women’s basketball office, schedule and game logistics along with implementing various marketing and community outreach strategies that lifted the program to new heights. She was fundamental in building the success of the women’s program leading in such roles as the fundraising for Charli’s Angels booster club and a liaison to multiple community groups and national associations.

Christina Wombacher was born and raised in Phoenix, Arizona. She was a basketball student athlete for two years at Yavapai College and two years at Boise State. She then returned to Arizona to work in Sun Devil Athletics and earn a master’s degree in Higher and Post-Secondary Education at Arizona State University.