�鶹��Ƶ Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics Devon Hawkins provided insight for an Oct. 30 examining a proposed constitutional amendment that would cap North Carolina’s state income tax rate at 3.5%.

The report explores the potential financial implications of the amendment, which voters will decide on Nov. 3. While the state’s current income tax rate is 3.99% and is scheduled to decrease to 3.49% in 2027, the amendment would prevent future lawmakers from raising the rate above 3.5%.

“Essentially, we’re not going to feel much of anything with this decrease in cap,” said Hawkins.

Hawkins explained that lower income tax rates could provide modest increases in take-home pay for residents, but could also reduce revenue available for public services.

“Every action has a reaction,” Hawkins said. “In this case, if we’re lowering tax rates, we’re eliminating tax revenue. There is no way around the fact that with less money, less can be done.”

The annual experience uses Charlotte as a classroom, helping students connect business education with the economic and social forces shaping the city.

Thomas Flaherty ’27, an entrepreneurship and innovation major, said the tour challenged some of his assumptions about affordable housing.

“The bus tour really changed my perception because the housing was actually really nice, clean and friendly-looking,” Flaherty said. “There were lots of trees and people walking around, so it showed how the housing met people’s living needs.”

Ian Knarr ’30, an economics major, came away with a different perspective on the city itself.

“Usually, when you see a city, you only see one part of it, but we got to see so many parts and how every part is different from each other,” Knarr said.

Trapani encouraged students to think about how understanding a place can shape the way they engage with its challenges.

“Things don’t just change. You have to change them,” Trapani told students. “It is important in order for you to become a full member of society to understand what you deeply care about and fight for it.”

Hanchett discussed how federal and local policies shaped Charlotte’s neighborhoods and development patterns and why understanding that history matters for future business and community leaders.

“The stories that I’m telling are stories that you will find everywhere in the U.S.,” Hanchett said. “It is hard sometimes to see them, but it shapes who we are.”

Dodson introduced students to DreamKey Partners’ work in affordable and mixed-income housing, including the Brightwalk development near uptown Charlotte. Students learned about the financing, partnerships and long-term planning involved in developing mixed-income communities and how those projects can affect surrounding neighborhoods.

“It is not just about housing,” Dodson said. “By building this community, we became an economic catalyst.”

Amarina Beard-Galati ’28, an entrepreneurship and innovation major, said traveling along Central Avenue highlighted another dimension of the city.

“Seeing all these shops and all these cultures that people have created is a sign that people want to come together and create a community that embraces us all,” Beard-Galati said.

For students in the Center for Humanity in Business program, Charlotte will become an even larger part of their �鶹��Ƶ experience when they spend their fourth year living in the city and completing a co-op experience tied to responsible management practices and their career interests.

Meira Flavin ’30, a marketing major, said the visit shifted her understanding of Charlotte.

“Coming into this experience, I had a preconceived notion of what Charlotte was,” Flavin said. “That changed today.”

He started over.

Taylor was leading about 1,200 employees when he told company leaders he eventually wanted to run a business. Their response: He needed to learn how to build brands. So the engineer and plant manager moved into marketing, working alongside colleagues who were much earlier in their careers.

“It was a wonderful lesson in humility,” Taylor said. “It was a great chance to learn and to be in the learning mode, not the knowing mode.”

That willingness to keep learning became a recurring theme on Sept. 10 in LaRose Digital Theatre at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business.

The conversation was moderated by Jack Ryan P’17, founder and principal of Jack Ryan Advisory and chair of the Love School of Business Board of Advisors.

Taylor spent more than 40 years with P&G, with assignments across the United States, Asia and Europe before eventually becoming chairman, president and CEO. Today, he serves as senior operating adviser to Clayton, Dubilier & Rice, chairman of the supervisory board of Opella Healthcare Group and non-executive chair of Delta Air Lines’ board of directors.

When Ryan asked what advice he would give students preparing to enter the workforce, Taylor pushed back on the idea that there is one ideal first assignment.

“Many people ask me, ‘What’s the right first assignment? Do I need to start in marketing or sales?’” Taylor said. “It doesn’t matter. What matters is what you do with the first assignment. Do you come into whatever you’re asked to do and do it with excellence?”

He said that strong work creates the credibility to take on larger challenges and eventually influence the organization itself.

“If you really want to change the system, be successful at wherever you are,” Taylor said. “That gives you a platform to be able to change the system. You build credibility that you can accomplish outcomes, and once you do that, the willingness for others to listen to you grows.”

Taylor said one of the strongest differentiators he has seen among successful leaders is their ability to bring out the best in the people around them.

“The greatest differentiator I’ve seen in my time with P&G, my time at Delta and now working with a private equity company is often their ability to unleash those around them,” Taylor said. “Those that have relatively little ego, but a high level of achievement, a high level of personal accountability and a high level of empathy for others.”

That combination, he said, creates something leaders cannot achieve on their own.

“What happens is they generate followership,” Taylor said. “That creates wonderful outcomes, especially when you get to mid- and higher levels, because the group amplifies the results.”

Students later turned the conversation toward artificial intelligence, asking Taylor what skills they should focus on as AI changes marketing and business.

Taylor said AI is already helping companies create and analyze content more quickly, but technology does not replace the need to understand the people a business serves.

“When we go to markets, the first meeting is in homes,” Taylor said. “We’d get to know the person. We’d learn about their life, their kids. ‘Tell us what you do each day.’”

He said those visits allowed teams to observe what consumers actually did, not just what they said they needed.

“You find there’s a lot of compensating behaviors consumers have,” Taylor said. “They’ll say, ‘This is not an issue,’ but you see they do an extra step because something doesn’t work the way they think it should.”

Taylor shared examples from P&G’s work in markets around the world, including observing how consumers washed their hair in rural China and how a consumer in Japan used Febreze on furniture she wished she could wash.

“You don’t see that looking at a sheet of paper,” Taylor said.

For Taylor, AI can accelerate the work once a company understands the problem it is trying to solve.

“AI will let you have faster, better answers once you know what to work on,” Taylor said. “What mountain do you want to climb? And that often comes from a better consumer insight and empathy.”

For the final student question, Taylor was asked whether there was one piece of advice he had used as a filter when making major decisions throughout his career.

His answer brought the conversation back to learning.

“Probably the simplest one is: Can I make a difference, and can I learn?” Taylor said.

He encouraged students to consider those questions as they evaluate their own opportunities, rather than getting caught up in salary, job titles or whether an assignment appears prestigious.

“Pick a place that you’re happy to walk in the door every day, you can hold your head up, you can learn and you can make a difference,” Taylor said. “You have talents and the ability to do a ton of things. You get to choose how you use those.”

�鶹��Ƶ Lessons from Leaders

Launched in 2017 by Dean Emeritus Raghu Tadepalli, Lessons from Leaders brings senior executives to campus for open talks, small group discussions and purposeful one-on-one networking that connects students with mentors. The program helps bridge classroom learning to real-world decision-making and strategy, and aims for every student to leave with a new contact and meaningful career insights.

�鶹��Ƶ Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics Devon Hawkins provided insight for a recent examining why rising Treasury yields are keeping mortgage rates elevated and contributing to affordability challenges for prospective homebuyers.

The article explains that Treasury yields have reached their highest levels in nearly two decades amid persistent inflation, increased government borrowing and greater competition for investor dollars. Because mortgage lenders use the 10-year Treasury yield as a benchmark when pricing home loans, increases in Treasury yields generally lead to higher mortgage rates.

“When Treasury yields go up, mortgage rates usually go up with them,” said Hawkins. “It’s not a perfect one-for-one relationship, but they tend to move in the same direction.”

That relationship is one reason 30-year mortgage rates remain around 6.6% to 6.7%, adding to borrowing costs for prospective buyers. The article advises homebuyers to focus on what they can comfortably afford at current rates rather than attempting to predict when borrowing costs might decline.

Devon Hawkins, assistant teaching professor of economics, recently spoke to USA Today for an advice article about mortgage affordability.

Hawkins cautions against relying solely on the mortgage amount approved based on income and debts. She notes that you should also factor in your budget and lifestyle.

“Once buyers receive lender approval, it can create a false sense of security around affordability,” Hawkins said. “Lenders rely on statistical formulas based on numbers, assumptions and averages, but they do not know your lifestyle, your future plans, your financial discipline, your non-negotiables or your risk tolerance.”

Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics Devon Hawkins about the cost of data storage following the social media app Snapchat announcing it would begin charging some users for its in-app storage.

The app announced last September that it would begin charging users for its in-app storage called “Memories” when usage exceeds five gigabytes. Anyone over that threshold was notified and given a year of temporary storage. The article highlights how its causing some users to lose access to imporant life milestones and memories.

“People think cloud storage is this invisible thing floating in the sky,” said Hawkins. “Those servers live in massive data centers that require land, buildings, electricity, cooling systems, engineering, cybersecurity and thousands of people to keep everything running. That infrastructure isn’t free, and eventually someone must pay for it.”

The program paired undergraduate students with faculty members to support AI-related projects across the school. Student fellows helped develop and deliver workshops, interview faculty and build materials for future courses and boot camps.

Sakura Kawakami ’26 worked with Scott Oakes, assistant teaching professor of management, and fellow students Julia Amodeo ‘26 and Katie Geraghty ’26 on workshops for Gateway classes.

The team visited eight classes and reached approximately 240 students through 20-minute sessions with hands-on exercises. The workshops introduced students to Gemini Pro, available through �鶹��Ƶ, and focused on practical skills such as improving prompts through iteration and added context.

“The primary goal was to establish a baseline of AI fluency among Gateway students, who are primarily first-year business students,” Oakes said. “We also wanted to test whether a short, bootcamp-style training session could effectively introduce students to practical AI skills within a classroom setting.”

Faculty established the project’s overall objectives before the students joined. Kawakami, Amodeo and Geraghty then helped develop classroom activities, learning objectives, presentation materials, pre- and post-session surveys, and the rollout plan. The students also led the workshops and helped analyze the resulting data.

“My role as an AI Fellow was to act as a bridge between students and faculty, advising students on how to use AI to enhance their learning, not replace it,” said Kawakami, a Business Analytics and Project Management major from Rotorua, New Zealand. “The goal was to make sure students felt confident using these tools in ways that supported them.”

One focus was helping students understand that effective use of AI often requires refining a prompt rather than accepting the first response.

“One of our biggest teaching points was the importance of iteration when prompting AI,” Kawakami said. “By refining and tailoring your prompts to your own needs, you get far more accurate and useful responses.”

Oakes said the student fellows strengthened the project by bringing their own experiences with AI into the classroom.

“Peer-to-peer learning is incredibly powerful,” he said. “First-year students often feel more comfortable asking questions and exploring new technologies when they see successful upper-level students demonstrating how they actually use those tools.”

Another team worked with Kem Zhang, associate professor of business analytics, on projects designed to support more advanced AI use in business courses.

Thomas Case ’26, a supply chain management and business analytics major from Atlanta, G.A. and Oliver Lorraine ’27, a project management and business analytics major from Red Bank, N.J. gathered input from faculty and developed materials for future workshops. One project focused on Associate Professor David Jiang’s, Bring the Venture to Life entrepreneurship course, where students develop and launch venture ideas.

Based on the needs identified for the course, the team created materials for an “AI-powered entrepreneurship” workshop covering topics such as prompting for code, e-commerce, payment integration and deployment.

Case led the workshop design and drafted presentation materials. Lorraine documented the development process and built reusable coding templates for future workshops and boot camps.

“The transition from AI users to AI builders or AI architects is an important distinction because knowing how to use a tool generally is much different than knowing how to use a tool to innovate,” said Case.

Lorraine also created Google Colab notebooks with coding templates for future use.

Zhang said the goal is to help students move beyond basic familiarity with AI tools.

“For business students, knowing how to use an AI tool is expected,” Zhang said. “The real advantage comes when they understand how these tools can be used in problem solving and to create concrete, AI-based solutions.”

Several projects from the spring semester are expected to continue during the 2026-27 academic year, including the entrepreneurship workshop, an AI Boot Camp for incoming students and additional work on AI integration.

The spring 2026 AI Student Fellows were Brandon Boudreau ‘27, Thomas Case ‘26, Oliver Lorraine ‘27, Dylan Stone ‘28, Julia Amodeo ‘26, Sakura Kawakami ‘26, Lindsay Balick ‘27, Katie Geraghty ‘26, Katrina Papierman ’26 and Tristan D’Adamo ‘28.

�鶹��Ƶ Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics Devon Hawkins was featured in a recent examining how tariffs are beginning to affect the cost of vehicle repairs for businesses and consumers across the Piedmont Triad.

The story highlights how local auto repair shops are seeing price increases on imported parts, with many warning that those higher costs are likely to be passed on to customers.

“You’re going to see the American people (consumers) taking the brunt of most of that increase in cost with tariffs,” said Hawkins. “We may not see the full impact on consumers. It may take six to 18 months.”

Teza shares what she hopes to accomplish in her new role and how �鶹��Ƶ students can benefit.

How would you describe your career path?

My career path consists of a series of lateral and advancement roles that provided exposure to multiple facets of the apparel industry. These positions prepared me to lead several market-leading brands, develop strong teams and implement transformation across complex regional and global businesses.

What does serving as an Executive in Residence at the Martha and Spencer Love School of Business mean to you?

I am excited to mentor and guide the next generation of leaders. I look forward to translating classroom learning into real-world scenarios and creating professional pathways through networking, internship opportunities and exposure to different industries.

What kinds of conversations and experiences do you hope to create for �鶹��Ƶ students during your time on campus?

I look forward to meaningful conversations regarding leadership, insights into managing domestic and global businesses and how students can create a pathway to finding a career in which they will thrive.

What perspectives from your work in global consumer brands are you most excited to share with �鶹��Ƶ students?

Leading a winning global brand combines emotional brand equity, operational scale and local execution. Managing global teams is both challenging and rewarding; it is critical to be well-versed in regional cultures to maximize employee engagement, create consistency in brand positioning and delight consumers.

What advice would you offer students who are interested in leading teams or managing large, complex organizations?

Leading a large organization requires the alignment of people, capital and processes to deliver results at scale. Aligning on priorities, building strong teams, operational excellence, constant communication, establishing decision-making rights and protecting a culture are the foundational blocks for success.

Beyond your résumé, what should people know about you and what you enjoy outside of work?

My primary focus is my family and making the most out of every day. My husband and I travel extensively to explore off-the-beaten-path locations, and we have a passion for boating, pickleball and golf. We enjoy spending time with our three children as they navigate their own career and life journeys, and we continue to coach people and businesses to help them maximize their potential.

Hosted in partnership with William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business, the summit invited participants to think not only about how AI is changing higher education, but also what should remain central to the student experience: judgment, curiosity, ethical decision-making, human connection and the ability to keep learning.

The summit opened Friday evening with a program that blended student innovation, music and conversation about AI’s role in business education. Haya Ajjan, dean of the Love School of Business, welcomed attendees before Margarita Kaprieylan, associate dean of the Love School of Business, guided the event as the program’s main host.

The evening featured student AI tool showcases, AI Fellows presentations, a performance by Vital Signs, �鶹��Ƶ’s a cappella group, and a fireside chat with higher education leaders.

Student presentations highlighted a range of AI applications, from financial education and career preparation to human resources and access to technology. Projects included a gamified credit simulation that helps students practice financial decision-making and GRIFFIN, an AI-powered tool designed to support human resources classification and pay decisions.

The fireside chat was moderated by Casey Evans, associate dean for undergraduate programs and student services at American University, who also joined the discussion alongside Stephen Walls, assistant dean at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and Hussein Issa, associate professor of accounting information systems at Rutgers Business School.

Saturday began with a keynote conversation between Anuj Mehrotra, dean of Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, and Jeff Sanders ’00, chief architect at Microsoft.

“Even a year ago, people were still doubting whether AI is here or not,” Mehrotra said. “At this point, AI is here.”

For Mehrotra, the question is no longer whether students should use AI, but what business schools are preparing them to do in a world where AI can already summarize, create, analyze and simulate.

“What has not changed is curiosity, the value of integrity, judgment and the importance of human relations,” Mehrotra said.

He challenged business schools to think beyond content knowledge and focus on the value students bring when information is abundant.

“We have to figure out what that North Star is going to be,” Mehrotra said. “It’s not going to be simply knowing something or being able to analyze something, because AI can do it for them.”

That theme continued during the “What Industry Wants Now” panel, which brought together leaders from Microsoft, Gartner, Bank of America and OpenAI.

“Universities now have the task not just to prepare students for a first job anymore,” said Nicole Perrelle, head of AI executive advisory service at Gartner. “It is to prepare them to have that life of continuous learning.”

For panelists, that preparation includes more than technical fluency. It also requires judgment, communication and the ability to use AI responsibly in complex workplaces.

“How do we accelerate the adoption of AI but do it in the right way?” said Danielle Nashold ’04, head of AI monitoring and controls strategy at Bank of America. In a highly regulated industry, Nashold discussed the importance of building governance, monitoring and control structures that allow organizations to use AI responsibly.

Amy Robbins ’14, brand insights lead at OpenAI, said AI fluency was expected when she interviewed for her role, but the conversation focused more on the human skills she would bring to the work.

“They were much more interested in how I think, how I approach complex problems, how I communicate,” Robbins said.

For Robbins, that human perspective remains essential, even inside an AI company.

“It’s not layering AI into existing systems for us,” Robbins said. “It’s layering the human into the AI systems.”

Jeff Sanders ’00, chief architect at Microsoft, added that higher education and industry will need to learn together as AI continues to change careers and roles.

“We don’t have all the answers,” Sanders said. “We know that careers are going to change. We know jobs are going to change.”

During the AI Fluency Mapping session, Tawnya Means, founding partner and principal of Inspire Higher Ed, helped prepare participants for the afternoon design sprint by walking them through ways to use AI with more purpose.

Casey Evans, associate dean for undergraduate programs and student services at American University’s Kogod School of Business, offered examples from Kogod’s redesigned curriculum, where students learn to evaluate AI critically and understand where their own judgment adds value.

“Students really need to learn how they are adding value, not just cutting and pasting,” Evans said.

Means then introduced tools participants could use in the design sprint, including the CRAFT framework, which helps users build stronger prompts by defining context, role, action, format and tone.

The summit also featured faculty pitches from �鶹��Ƶ and William & Mary, giving participants examples of how instructors are already experimenting with AI in their classrooms.

In the afternoon, participants applied ideas from the summit during the “Hack the Business Curriculum” design sprint.

The design sprint concluded with three winning teams.

First place went to Calibra, a classroom tool designed to help faculty evaluate and strengthen assignments for AI resilience, critical thinking, curiosity, metacognition and career development.

Second place went to Essentials of Business Reimagined for AI, which proposed redesigning an introductory business course around a semester-long AI-powered simulation.

Third place went to Roast My LinkedIn, a career-readiness tool that uses humor to review LinkedIn profiles before offering practical feedback.

The summit concluded with remarks from Katherine Guthrie, associate dean at William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business.

“This doesn’t end here,” said Guthrie. “This collaboration started after William & Mary hosted an AI summit last year, and it has grown into a shared effort to create space for educators, students and industry leaders to think more intentionally about AI in higher education. We’re looking to next year, where the summit will continue at William & Mary and build on what has been started here.”

The summit was supported by sponsors including Quinncia and Global Academic Ventures. Quinncia provides career-readiness tools that support students in the job search process. Global Academic Ventures supports study abroad programming and international learning opportunities.

Additional sponsors included Breakout Learning, Interpretive Simulations, McGraw-Hill, QuantHub and GMAC.

Katherine Guthrie, associate dean at William & Mary with fellow colleagues

Casey Evans, associate dean for undergraduate programs and student services at American University, moderating the discussion alongside Stephen Walls, assistant dean at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and Hussein Issa, associate professor of accounting information systems at Rutgers Business School

Margarita Kaprieylan, associate dean at the Love School of Business introducing the keynote

Tawnya Means, founding partner and principal of Inspire Higher Ed, and Casey Evans, associate dean for undergraduate programs and student services at American University’s Kogod School of Business, at the AI Fluency Mapping session

Quinncia presenting at the AI Summit

Global Academic Ventures presenting at the AI Summit

Margarita Kaprieylan, associate dean at the Love School of Business, and Katherine Guthrie, associate dean at William & Mary’s Raymond A. Mason School of Business

Vital Signs performing at the AI Summit

Casey Evans, associate dean for undergraduate programs and student services at American University, moderating the discussion alongside Stephen Walls, assistant dean at the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas at Austin, and Hussein Issa, associate professor of accounting information systems at Rutgers Business School

Anuj Mehrotra, dean of Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, and Jeff Sanders ’00, chief architect at Microsoft

Anuj Mehrotra, dean of Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, and Jeff Sanders ’00, chief architect at Microsoft

Anuj Mehrotra, dean of Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, and Jeff Sanders ’00, chief architect at Microsoft