Richard M. Castaldi is a Professor in the Department of Management in the College of Business at San Francisco State University.  He received his M.S.B.A. in Management from the University of Denver and a Ph.D. in Strategic Management from Virginia Tech. Professor Castaldi has published over 25 articles in scholarly publications including the International Marketing Review, the Journal of Global Marketing, the Journal of Transnational Management, the Journal of Management Systems, the Journal of Business Strategies, the Journal of Management in Practice, the Journal of Applied Business Research, the International Wine Marketing Journal, Management Review, Entrepreneurship:  Theory and Practice, and the Journal of Small Business Management, among others.  He has also presented over 50 refereed papers at national and international conferences, and has taught graduate and undergraduate courses in Strategic Management and International Business in China, France, and Spain.  Dr. Castaldi has been the Project Director of four successful U.S. Department of Education grants and has been awarded over $710,000 of federal funds. This federal support has been used to enhance the international business education of SFSU students and to assist the California wine industry through applied research projects involving exporting, family business issues, e-commerce utilization, environmental sustainability and numerous international trade topics.  He is currently active in consulting and researching challenges and opportunities associated with the continuing globalization of the wine industry, with particular emphasis on enhancing the competitive capabilities of the 1,500+ small California wineries.

Susan Cholette: I'm from Upstate New York originally, but have been out in the SF Bay Area since 1989. I graduated with a BSE from Princeton in 1989 and a Ph.D. from Stanford in 1996. The next 5 years I spent in industry as a Supply Chain Consultant, Project Manager and Client Engagement Manager. I returned to academia when I joined the Decision Sciences Department of the College of Business in Fall 2002. Courses taught here include DS412 (Operations Management), BUS786 (Operations Analysis) and BA855 (Supply Chain Management). The latter was offered for the first time at SFSU in Fall 2003, and I had the honor of developing and teaching it. My research interests range from topics in Supply Chain Management and Project Management to quantitiative analysis of the wine industry. I'm also interested in pedagogy, especially in ways to enhance and assess student learning. I try to serve my university by participating in a variety of activities, including running the JFRC for the 03/04 academic year, participating in the Assessment, CAC and Departmental Outreach committees, as well as helping out the office of International Programs. (I'm a firm believer in the value of study abroad programs, both for students and professors.) In what remains of my spare time (hah!), I like to hike, bike, kayak, ski and travel.

Mahmood Hussain, Assistant Professor, joined SFSU in Fall 2002. He received his PhD in Economics from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 2000. His background includes professional experience in marketing research and an MBA degree. He also taught at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado at Boulder prior to joining SFSU. His current teaching interests are marketing management and strategy, marketing research, consumer behavior, and international marketing. His research interests include marketing decision support systems, teaching marketing research and Internet marketing.

Michael Meeks is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management. He is the founding director of SFSU's Family Business Center, where he serves as chief executive, as well as leading family business workshops and facilitating family forum gatherings. He teaches the undergraduate and MBA capstone business course, family business courses, business negotiations, business ethics, and managmenet of technology. Dr. Meeks is currently engaged in six streams of research: (1) strategic management, (2) entrepreneurship, (3) family business, (4) the wine industry, (5) the bio- and nano-tech industries, and (6) higher education. As a Native American and Martial Artist, Meeks investigates and writes in these areas as well. After growing up in the SF Bay Area, and attending UOP for his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and computer science, he founded and managed over 25 successful local Bay Area Ventures. He left these entrepreneurial ventures in 1993 to pursue his PhD, which he received from the University of Colorado at Boulder after attaining his MBA from the Univeristy of San Diego and then studying in the doctoral program at the University of Georgia.

Ronald Purser is Professor of Management in the College of Business at San Francisco State University, and an adjunct faculty member and Benedictine University, Fielding Institute, and Colorado Technical University. Prior to this, he was a tenured professor and Graduate Program Director at the Center for Organization Development at Loyola University of Chicago. Dr. Purser earned his Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University and his B.A. in Psychology from Sonoma State University. He is past Division Chair for the Organization Development and Change division of the Academy of Management. He has published over sixty refereed journal articles and book chapters on high performance work systems, design of new product development organizations, environmental management, social creativity, and participative strategic planning. In addition, Dr. Purser is co-author and co-editor of four books including The Search Conference: A Powerful Method for Planning Organizational Change and Community Action (Jossey-Bass, 1996), Social Creativity, Volumes 1 & 2 (Hampton Press, 2000), and The Self-Managing Organization (The Free Press, 1998). His book, The Self Managing Organization, was selected as one of the Top Ten Management Books for 1998 by the Management General mega-website. His research has been featured in such places as Fortune, The Washington Post, and Training magazines. His guest editorial article, "Shallow versus Deep Organization Development and Environmental Sustainability" appeared in the Journal of Organizational Change Management won the 1995 Best Paper Literati Club Awards for Excellence. His new book, Creativity and Innovation in Organizations, will be published by South Western Publishing in 2007. He is also working on a new edited book, Time in the Network Society, which will be published by Stanford University Press. Dr. Purser has been an active consultant and researcher in both the private and public sector. Some of his major clients in the private sector have included Amoco, Andersen Consulting, Eastman Kodak, Exxon Chemicals, General Electric, Metal Container, Polaroid, Procter & Gamble, Progressive Insurance, Storage Technology, Syncrude Canada, United Airlines, Whirlpool, and Xerox. Public sectors clients have included Office of the Governor (Delaware), Calgary Board of Education, Symphony Orchestra Institute, Office of the Governor (Mississippi), The Nature Conservancy, Illinois Board of Education, Illinois Public Leadership Forum, U.S. Office of Personnel Management, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Prior to his academic career, he was a journeyman industrial electrician at Pullman-Standard and a number of other factories in the Chicago area. He also worked as an engineering draftsman assistant at the Abex Corporation, a production line operator at a pharmaceutical plant, and as a mental health technician at psychiatric hospitals in California, Illinois and Ohio. His other interests and hobbies include avid reading, amateur (ham) radio, playing electric guitar at local Bay Area blues jams, hiking, weight training, qiqong, Buddhism, and meditation.

Lutfus Sayeed is Professor of Information Systems in the College of Business at San Francisco State University. His teaching interests include management of information technology for strategic advantage, computer networking, database management, and Web based business application development. His research focuses on information sharing in groups using computer mediated communications systems, adoption/diffusion of information technology, and impacts of information technology. He has published numerous research articles. His works have appeared in major MIS journals such as Information Systems Research, Decision Sciences, and Information and Management. Dr. Sayeed also consults and trains in the area of computer networking. He taught in universities in France, Mexico, and Australia. As a Fulbright lecturer, he taught in the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta.

Sameer Verma is associate professor of Information Systems at San Francisco State University. His research focuses on the diffusion and adoption of innovative technologies. He is currently working on several academic research projects which include the diffusion of open source software, mobility issues in wireless networks, identity management across disparate networks and communication modes in messaging systems. In addition to his academic work, Dr. Verma has worked with companies in consulting capacity in the areas of content analysis, management and delivery. Dr. Verma also serves on the advisory boards of some SF Bay Area technology companies.