Associate Professor Simon Blanchard Named to Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 List

Georgetown McDonough’s Simon Blanchard has been named to the Poets & Quants Best 40 Under 40 list. The annual list highlights the 40 best MBA professors under 40 years old from across the world. 

Professors are chosen based on both research acumen and teaching skills, and only 40 out of 2,000 professors nominated by their peers, alumni, and students made the list this year. 

Poets & Quants selected Blanchard, Beyer Family Associate Professor of Marketing, for the list based on his insightful research and his ability and willingness to go beyond the classroom to mentor and impact students’ professional development.

“Professor Blanchard gave me a tactical, highly practical, and tangible framework for tackling real-world analytical situations, which I still use daily and credit much of my post-graduate professional success,” said one of his students during the nomination process. “Besides being a great teacher, Professor Blanchard is also a great person who always made himself available long after graduation. He has had a remarkable impact on myself and my classmates, and gets my highest recommendation for a nomination.”

Blanchard currently is focusing on using quantitative methods to understand the financially vulnerable debt repayment decisions. His research shows that getting consumers motivated may be just as important as getting them to internalize the optimal way to manage their finances.

In addition to teaching digital marketing strategy and marketing research to MBAs, Blanchard also serves as the director of the MBA Certificate in Consumer Analytics and Insights at the McDonough School of Business. Blanchard prepares MBA students to identify sources of data to examine how an organization’s actions affect relevant decisions, select suitable methods to analyze these data, and understand the risks involved. 

He notes that he enjoys how students bring their own very unique experiences to the classroom. “I’ve had practicing data scientists, musicians, artists, nuclear engineers, fashion designers, lobbyists, school teachers, and bankers — but what’s interesting to some will not be interesting to others,” said Blanchard. He welcomes this pedagogical challenge.