Mary Caravella

Education/Professional Certification

• D.B.A., Harvard Business School
• M.B.A., Harvard Business School
• B.S.E.E., Marquette University

Areas of Expertise

marketing strategy, digital strategies for customer lead generation and relationship nurturing, professional selling

Mary Caravella is an Associate Professor in Residence at the University of Connecticut School of Business, where she teaches marketing strategy in the MBA program and professional sales in the undergraduate program. Mary has been recognized for her innovation and expertise in teaching, including being awarded MBA Marketing Professor of the Year in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2018. She leads the annual MBA Case Challenge experiential program, runs a biannual Professional Sales role-play competition, and led a task force in a redesign of the Full-Time MBA Program in 2015.

Mary’s research interests focus on helping marketers appropriately identify and effectively interact with new customers. She is particularly interested in the integration of digital and physical marketing channels and direct sales forces, particularly in business-to-business professional services, technology, and nonprofit fundraising. Her dissertation research on prospective customers’ reactions to lead generation programs was recognized with an award by the Institute for the Study of Business Markets. Her research with colleagues on the interaction between digital and physical retail channels was recognized by the American Marketing Association as having a significant long-term contribution to research in marketing channels. She has published in the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, and the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science. She has also published several teaching cases and advised student startups on marketing strategy.

Prior to her academic career, Mary worked for nearly a decade in sales, marketing and organizational change leadership positions at GE Fanuc Automation, a factory automation joint venture. She has an undergraduate electrical engineering degree from Marquette University, and both an MBA and doctorate from the Harvard Business School.