I'm a full professor! Only because others believed in me.

Gratitude for the drops of belief that filled my cup of confidence.

Dear Friends,

It’s been too long. Regular programming will come back soon. But today, I’d like your indulgence to share a deeply personal post. (Some of you may have already seen the same post on LinkedIn.)

A few days ago, I got a call from the dean of The Wharton School, Erika James, with the happy news that I've been promoted to full professor (from associate professor). She was extremely gracious in offering her congratulations and even thanked me for choosing Wharton as my academic home. I was left a bit speechless by the news and only managed to mumble a few words of appreciation before we hung up. I wish I'd been more eloquent in the moment, but the emotions overcame me a bit. I've now had a few days to process, and I'd like to attempt to express what this means to me.

My goal is to express appreciation and celebrate those who made it possible. I recognize that personal celebrations of professional advancement can often come across as boastful or self-serving. If that's what ends up coming across, I'll have failed to accomplish that I set out out do. My hope is that I can do better than that and offer something authentic and, perhaps, helpful to someone.

Thank you for taking the time to read this.

What is a "full professor"?

There are three hierarchical levels among university professors in US universities: assistant professor, associate professor, and professor.

After many years of hard work as a PhD student, you start out as an assistant professor. Which is hard on your mom, who thought that you'd actually be a professor after all those years in school. She then sees your title and says, "I thought you were a professor. Who's assistant are you?" You try to explain it but it just doesn't work. So you work really hard for several more years and get promoted to associate professor. At most universities, including mine, that's also the moment when you're granted tenure. Which is also hard on your mom, who thought that you'd surely be a professor if the university's willing to give you a job for life. But she sees your title and says (again), "I thought you were a professor. Who's associate are you?"

So instead of explaining, you keep working really hard for several more years and (finally!) all qualifiers are removed. You're now a professor. Period. Within the profession, we refer to it as "full professor" to distinguish it from the other stages. Or maybe because we're so used to having a qualifier in front of the word professor? Or maybe because we can finally say, "Mom! I'm not anyone's assistant or associate anymore. I never was! I'm a full professor now! Stop asking, please."

If you're still confused, I don't blame you. Here's an analogy that chatGPT helped develop to explain it to people outside the rarified world of academia. Becoming a full professor is a bit like becoming a senior partner at a law or consulting firm after being a junior partner. As an associate professor (junior partner), you've proven your capabilities, earned a permanent spot (tenure), and are contributing meaningfully to the institution. A full professor (senior partner) has reached the highest level of recognition and authority. They are supposed to be leaders in their field, shape the direction of their department/school, mentor junior colleagues, and influence major decisions — much like senior partners do within their firms. Not a perfect analogy. And clearly not all of this applies to me. But good enough.

The Belief of Others

Five years ago, when I was promoted to associate professor with tenure, I wrote a similar article on LinkedIn. I expressed two overarching feelings: (1) profound gratitude for the people and institutions that made it possible and (2) a strong sense of how unlikely it is that someone with my background would end up tenured at Wharton (or in academia at all). In the days since the news of my recent promotion, those feelings have come back strongly.

But this time, those feelings have coalesced into memories of those who believed in me more than I believed in myself.

Almost exactly twenty four years ago, I arrived in the US to attend college at Brigham Young University. By American standards, my college was extremely affordable. But by the standards of incomes in Uruguay, where I'm from and where my parents made a living, it was astronomically expensive. My folks emptied out their savings and compromised their retirement to pay for a single year of college, after which I had to find a way. It cost them, literally, all they had. They never doubted or complained about it. They believed implicitly that the best investment they could make was in my education and that of my siblings.

Not too long after starting college, I met a lovely blue-eyed girl named Kendra. We fell in love and married young. I was only beginning life as a college student and had no discernible prospects or a clear career path. It would be nearly ten years before I completed my education and got a serious job. Along the way, we had children and lived on the tightest of budgets. Even a $20 expense required a conversation. Sometimes the pressure was enormous. But Kendra never once complained about our temporary deprivation. She believed implicitly in my ability and in our family as the best long-term investment.

Twenty years ago this year, I decided to pursue an academic career. It meant five extra years of schooling and a massive opportunity cost. Kendra saw that I was unhappy in what was otherwise a predictably lucrative job, and she told me it wasn't worth it if I was going to come home unhappy from work every day. So I took the GMAT and applied to doctoral programs. I was rejected by all my dream schools -- including Wharton, which was at the top of my wishlist. For a while, feared that I wouldn't get into any programs at all. I couldn't make sense of it. My confidence was shaken.

And then, about as late in the game as possible, I was admitted off of the waitlist into the Carlson School of Management of the University of Minnesota. With gratitude that someone had taken a chance on me, but with my confidence still soft, I joined the Strategic Management and Organization department. There I was trained by a wonderful group of professors who not only taught me the ropes, but restored my belief that I could be a capable scholar. Myles Shaver and Aks Zaheer were the best dissertation advisors one could ask for: brilliant leaders in their fields, supportive to a fault, and interested in me as a whole person.

Five years later, it was time to go on the job market. I was afraid of the same kind of rejection I'd experienced when applying to PhD programs. But my program had prepared me well, and I had the good fortune of fielding several offers. I couldn't believe there was more than one place willing to bet that I could be a productive scholar and effective teacher. Kendra and I chose to go to the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis. Owning a home for the first time was a massive upgrade from the budget-friendly student apartments of the previous decade. We settled into St. Louis for the long run.

My entry into the job of professor was bumpy. For the first few weeks, I had a severe case of impostor syndrome. The brilliance and accomplishments of my senior colleagues was intimidating. It didn't help that, right around the same time, one of the top journals in my field brutally rejected my dissertation for publication. It wasn't so much that my work was turned down. That's common enough and to be expected. It was the way in which I was rejected. The comments of the reviewers were savage and personal. They didn't just attack the quality of my research. They attacked my personal ability. Never before nor since have I received such mean-spirited feedback. In hindsight, their words were uncalled for and unfair. But in my impostor state of mind, I internalized the negativity.

It took me some time to regain my mojo. It was my students who helped jolt me back. I was privileged to teach Management 100, the introductory business class required for all freshman at the Olin Business School. Stepping into the classroom, putting myself in their shoes, and helping them work through personal and professional decisions helped put my own problems in perspective. Serving them reminded me of how far I'd come and helped me believe in my ideas once again. Eventually, I found success in publishing my work, including the bruttally-rejected dissertation.

That success led to an unexpected, life-changing opportunity.

Eighteen months after arriving in St. Louis, I was sitting in my office when I received a phone call from a number I didn't recognize. It was someone at Wharton, telling me that they had been impressed with my research, that there was a position opening up, and inquiring about my interest in applying. I was surprised. Wharton had long been my dream school. A perfect fit for someone with my research interests. But I had twice been unsuccessful getting into Wharton, first as a PhD applicant and then as an applicant for an assistant professor position. Was the third time the charm? Was it the right move for our family? With Kendra's blessing, I applied and, as they say, the rest is history.

But it's not quite as simple as that. In hindsight, it may seem like my success at Wharton was a foregone conclusion. But that's not at all how it felt in real time. My future Wharton colleagues were the very same people whose research I had read and admired for years. Now I was going to work next to them! Before arriving, I was worried that Wharton would be like a pressure cooker: high-stress and low-support. Not having an elite academic pedigree -- or any pedigree at all, for that matter -- I also worried about whether I was good enough. I couldn't have been more wrong about the first concern. My colleagues proved to be remarkably kind and supportive. Their belief in my ideas and abilities has been genuine and abiding. Lots of academic departments have brilliant people. Fewer have brilliant people who are also good human beings. I'm lucky to be in a department full of both. That combination did a lot to help me find the confidence I needed to succeed.

I've loved the twelve years working at this institution. Joseph Wharton founded the first business school in the world with the belief that the discipline could be taught based on scientific principles and that business was critical to solving society's most vexing problems. Those principles are still part of the school's DNA, 144 years later. They inform how we do research and how we teach. My students have frequently thanked me for what I've taught them. What they probably don't full grasp is that they've taught me a whole lot more. Standing in front of a class is an awesome responsbility; it only works if students trust that the professor knows something worth knowing. My students have consistently and graciously provided me with that trust.

I could mention so many more people and share so many more anecdotes. But this is the upshot of what I'm trying to say:

The belief required to reach this stage of my career developed one drop at a time.

Each of those drops came from the belief of others.

I'm deeply thankful for that! To my parents. To Kendra. To our children. To my advisors and professors. To my students. To my colleagues. To my two alma matters. To the two institutions that took a risk when hiring me. To my coauthors. To friends and relatives. And to everyone I'm failing to remember right now.

Earning It

In the crowning scene of the WWII film Saving Private Ryan, Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) is dying after leading an elite group of soldiers to find Private Ryan (Matt Damon) through perilous battlefields. Most of them gave their lives to complete the mission of ensuring Ryan will return home and live out a normal life. With his dying breath, Captain Miller pleads with Ryan to "Earn this... earn it."

Nobody has had to give up their lives to help me make it to this stage. But I hope it's obvious from what I've shared that my success is largely a function of the sacrifices others made for me.

What's left for me now is to earn those sacrifices and honor the beliefs underlying them.

I hope to do that in three ways:

1. By mentoring those who need to be believed in.

2. By contributing relevant and rigorous research to a world in which reflexive opinion too often outpaces credible evidence.

3. By taking the role of public intellectual seriously and disseminating credible evidence as widely as possible.

I'm sure my efforts won't always hit the mark. But what a privilege to be in a position to try!