Dr. Tamar Avnet Named Interim Associate Dean; Michael Strauss Appointed Interim Dean
Dr. Tamar Avnet and Michael Strauss have been appointed Interim Associate Dean and Interim Dean, respectively. Dr. Avnet takes the reins as interim Associate Dean, a position previously held by Strauss, who now assumes the role of interim Dean, temporarily succeeding Dr. Noam Wasserman. As Dean, Dr. Wasserman led the Sy Syms School of Business from 2019 to 2025.
Dr. Tamar Avnet has been at the Sy Syms School of Business since 2006 and became Chair of the Marketing Department in 2012. Dr. Avnet鈥檚 business expertise and consulting activities cover Marketing Strategy and Management, Branding Strategy, Consumer Psychology, and the Psychology of Decision Making. Her current research focuses on Consumer Behavior, with a particular emphasis on Human Judgment and Behavioral Decision Making, an area that investigates how consumers use and rely on their feelings and emotions when making a product choice or a purchase decision. Her numerous scientific articles are widely cited and have appeared in many leading academic journals in Marketing, Management, and Psychology, including the Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Consumer Psychology, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Advances in Consumer Research.
She is on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Consumer Research and serves as a reviewer for numerous publications focused on Marketing and Psychology. As of 2025, her work has been cited 3,578 times.
Michael Strauss has been at the Sy Syms School of Business since 2008, holding multiple leadership and academic roles, including Associate Dean, Clinical Professor of Strategy and Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneur-in-Residence, and Director of the Rennert Entrepreneurial Institute. He served as Associate Dean from 2011 to 2017 and as Interim Dean from 2017 to 2019. Before joining 樱花动漫, Dean Strauss was Chairman of Sherwood Consulting Group, Inc., a management advisory firm dedicated to steering emerging growth companies. In addition, he served as CEO of multiple companies, bringing deep experience in turnaround management. Dean Strauss鈥 industry expertise was forged during his twelve years at American Express, where he rose to Executive Vice President of the Travel Related Services Division before leaving the company. He has also served in several financial and management capacities at American Airlines, the Bank of New York and CitiGroup. He has a BBA from The City College of New York and an MBA from Baruch College, The City University of New York. Dean Strauss was born and raised in Israel and is fluent in Hebrew and German.
Dean Strauss has taught several undergraduate courses, including Principles of Management, Organizational Behavior, and Turnaround Business Strategy, the latter of which he also developed. He also has taught Entrepreneurship in the Sy Syms MBA program, and Swimming with Sharks, a college-level course he designed for senior students at YU Central High School. His teaching interests include entrepreneurship, business leadership, and employee career development.
Dean Strauss is a founding member of the Board of Trustees of the Long Island Museum of Science and Technology and Cristo Rey Academy, a college preparatory high school exclusively serving at-risk youth from inner city communities. He also served on the Long Island High Technology Incubator and the Dean鈥檚 Council at the College of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Stony Brook University (SUNY) He is a founding member of the Long Island Software and Technology Network and a founding member and Chairman of ExecuLeaders Forum for Marketing and Sales. He currently serves as the President of the Board of Managers of the Estates Condo Association, where he lives, and is a member of the Zoning Board of Appeals for the Village of North Hills in Long Island, NY.
Dr. Pablo Hern谩ndez-Lagos Appointed Chair of Strategy & Entrepreneurship Department and Director of MBA Program
Dr. Pablo Hern谩ndez-Lagos has been appointed the new Chair of the Strategy & Entrepreneurship Department, taking over the role from Dr. Sharon Poczter. He joined Sy Syms School of Business in January 2021 as an Associate Professor of Strategy & Entrepreneurship. He became Chair of that department at the end of January 2025 and Director of the Customized Online MBA program in March 2025. He received tenure in May 2025. Here鈥檚 what Dr. Hern谩ndez-Lagos had to say about his goals for the Strategy & Entrepreneurship Department and the MBA program:
Goal for Strategy & Entrepreneurship Department: 鈥淢y aim is to improve the quality of the program. We have great faculty, so we need to work together to make the teaching more consistent across sections, especially in our initial courses.鈥
Goals for MBA Program:
- In-Person STEM MBA: 鈥淲e are working very hard to design a world-class in-person STEM MBA. The plan is to roll it over next year. I am directing the course content design and the curriculum. This is a fascinating project, a great growth opportunity for our school, so I am very excited about it.鈥
- Customized Online MBA: 鈥淲e will continue the great work that Linda and Tamar (and before Tamar, Mark Finkel) did running the online MBA. Our partners excel at supporting the program's operations, including course design, delivery, and improvement.鈥
His research focuses on the political consequences of economic growth. His work uses theory, empirical, and experimental methods from economics. It currently explores how Generative Artificial Intelligence affects funders' ability to accurately screen entrepreneurs鈥 human capital.
Dr. Hern谩ndez-Lagos鈥 work has been featured in American Political Science Review, Quarterly Journal of Political Science, Experimental Economics, Journal of Urban Economics, Nature, Scientific Reports and many other academic journals and outlets. Some of the news outlets where Dr. Hern谩ndez-Lagos鈥 work has been featured include Yahoo!, Politico, Bloomberg, Harvard Business School Review, The Brookings Institution, and VoxEU, among others.
Dr. Sharon Poczter officially announced that she would be stepping down as Chair of the school鈥檚 Strategy & Entrepreneurship Department on January 15, 2025, after seven years in the role. She has left the position to focus on new opportunities to build at YU. During her tenure, she led significant advancements in both the curriculum and faculty development.
Some of Dr. Poczter鈥檚 key accomplishments as Department Chair include:
- Complete overhaul and rebrand of the Management Department to the Strategy and Entrepreneurship Department
- Increasing enrollment in the major by 90% over six years, moving it from the smallest of five departments, in terms of majors, to the second largest.
- Hiring two tenure-track faculty: Dr. Pablo Hern谩ndez-Lagos from NYU Abu Dhabi and Dr. Patryk Perkowski, both stars in their respective areas of study and award-winning teachers.
- Contributed to the development of nine new courses including the YU Innovation Lab; Venture Capital courses (Intro to Venture Capital & Fund Formation) created by Maccabee Ventures general partners and Sy Syms adjunct professors Moshe Bellows 鈥90YC and Bruce Taragin 鈥89SB; the YU Women's Initiative for Leadership & Learning (YUWILL); and the Golda Meir Fellowship group.
鈥淏eing Chair was an amazing experience,鈥 said Dr. Poczter . 鈥淚 was able to be a builder within academia. To build environments that students and faculty can thrive in is my passion. I want to thank Mike Strauss and Moses Pava and the faculty for entrusting me with the then 鈥淢anagement鈥 Department, and to Dean Noam Wasserman for guidance along the way. To the faculty, thank you for your support and help all these years. And finally, to my amazing students throughout the years. Everyone knows I am completely inspired by YU students and that is my impetus to continue to build amazing programs for the University and students. It鈥檚 now time to pass the reins to my very capable colleague Dr. Hern谩ndez-Lagos who I am confident will take the Department to new heights.
Dr. Poczter continues at 樱花动漫 as the founding director of YUWILL (樱花动漫 Women鈥檚 Initiative for Leadership and Learning), the director of the the Senator Joseph Lieberman 鈥 Mitzner Center for Public Service and Advocacy and an associate professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at Sy Syms.
Dr. Jannine Lasaleta Named Chair of Marketing Department
Dr. Jannine Lasaleta has been appointed the new Chair of the Marketing Department, succeeding Dr. Tamar Avnet. She joined Sy Syms in 2018 as an Assistant Professor of Marketing and later became an Associate Professor, earning tenure in 2024. She assumed the role of Marketing Chair on April 1. Dr. Lasaleta says her main goal for the Marketing Department is to grow the number of tenured and tenure track faculty and to increase research output. Focusing on the fields of motivation and emotion, specifically nostalgia, her research has been featured in Nature, Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of the Association of Consumer Research, Forbes, Harvard Business Review and on the BBC and The Today Show.
