Donald Sexton

Professor of Marketing and Decisions, Risk, and Operations; Director, Centre on International Business Education and Research, Columbia Business School

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND: *M.B.A. and Ph.D., University of Chicago

TEACHING INTERESTS: Professor Sexton is well-known and highly regarded as a speaker and consultant to management in the areas of marketing, branding, and sales management.

He received his M.B.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago and his B.A. from Wesleyan University, all in the disciplines of mathematics and economics. For more than forty years he has been a member of the regular faculty of Columbia University, teaching in the areas of marketing, international business, and quantitative methods and receiving the Business School's Distinguished Teaching Award.

Professor Sexton played a major role in designing and developing the Columbia Marketing Management Programme, for many years rated number one in the world by the Financial Times, and for a number of years served as a Faculty Director of that programme as well as the Executive Programme in International Management, the International Strategy Programme, and the Programme on Building and Managing Brand Equity. He served as the Programme Director for the Conference Board’s Annual Conference on Marketing Effectiveness and the Programme Director for their Councils on Marketing Research and is a frequent speaker at events of the Association of National Advertisers.

For several years Professor Sexton served as a visiting professor at INSEAD and currently teaches executives at the China Europe International Business School in Shanghai. He has also taught at the University of California-Berkeley, the Indian School of Business, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Skolkovo (Moscow School of Management), Beijing Management Institute, Australian Graduate School of Management, University of Hawaii, University of Tehran, Industrial Management Institute (Tehran), Jagiellonian University (Krakow), and the U.S. Business School in Prague. He is a frequent conference speaker on marketing, branding, marketing ROI, international business, advertising, sales management, and pricing and is often interviewed and quoted in media such as the New York Times, Business Week, BtoB, Ad Age, WCBS, and China Economic Daily.

RECENT PUBLICATIONS: Professor Sexton’s research and writings focus on the design and implementation of marketing and branding strategies, both domestic and global, and the evaluation of marketing ROI. He received the 2011 Marketing Trends Conference award for his work on marketing and branding strategy. His numerous articles have appeared in publications such as the Harvard Business Review, Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Business, and Management Science. His book on marketing strategy, Marketing 101 (Wiley, 2006 and 2009), is sold throughout the world and has been translated into several languages including Chinese, Turkish, Polish, Farsi, and Indonesian. His Branding 101 (Wiley, 2008) is being translated into Russian and Vietnamese. His newest book, Value Above Cost: Driving Superior Financial Performance with CVA®, the Most Important Metric You’ve Never Used (Wharton School Publishing, 2009) explains how marketing and branding determine financial performance and is available in Chinese.

CORPORATE EXPERIENCE: Professor Sexton is the founder and president of The Arrow Group, Ltd., an organisation that develops and conducts executive seminars and provides consulting services in marketing and branding strategy and in marketing and branding ROI. He also provides expert testimony. His clients have included GE, Unilever, Verizon, Citicorp, Sony, IBM, AT&T, Novartis, Pepsi, Boeing, Kellogg’s, DuPont, Kodak, Motorola, Pfizer, Grainger, MetLife, Omnicom, Brown-Forman, McGraw-Hill, VNU, medcohealth, Eastman Chemical, Intuit, Bacardi, UNICEF, Merck, AIG, Domino's, Abbott, Corning, Dial, Alitalia, Wendy’s, Metropolitan Opera, Avon, Chase, Shell, Zeiss, Dow Corning, Mattel, Hershey, Hormel, Miller Brewing, Symantec, Florida Power & Light, Hallmark Channel, Sanofi-Aventis, Volkswagen, Becton Dickinson, and Texas Instruments.