Vidya Mani

Education: B.E., MS University, India; MBA, IIT Mumbai, India; Ph.D. Kenan-Flagler Business School, UNC Chapel Hill, USA

Dr. Mani is an Associate Professor of Business Administration. Her research and teaching focus on creating sustainable global value chains wherein businesses not only conduct their operations in a responsible manner, but also ensure that they do so as part of a global supply chain that adds value to the society and environment that these supply chains pass through. It is key to achieving the targets set out in the UN Sustainable Goals by 2030. In her research, she studies how supply chain imperatives drive operational decisions across electronics, oil and natural gas, pharmaceutical, and retail sectors. Her work highlights how businesses within these supply chains will respond to specific market constraints and regulations. Some of her research topics include developing an efficient product portfolio and distribution strategy for specialty drugs, evaluating the effectiveness of inspection and penalties towards ensuring environmental safety and compliance for oil and gas sector, making targeted assortment and labor decisions for retail stores, and effective ways to create a secure supply chain in the electronics sector.  She teaches an elective on Sustainable Global Value Chains in the Residential MBA Program and the Executive MBA Program at the Darden Business School.

Dr. Mani works with the industry and policy makers to identify the impact of recent legislative efforts and ESG standards on the supply chain and evaluate the tradeoffs associated between local policies, national security, and global goals. In collaboration with the US Department of Defense and the LMI Research Institute, she developed a data-driven intelligent response toolkit to mitigate counterfeit risk in the weapons system supply chain. Dr. Mani is also a Franklin Fellow at the Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Office of International Labor Affairs.