Samuel Engel

Samuel Engel has been a management consultant, business leader, and teacher for nearly three decades. In his role as a consultant to airlines and investors, he specializes in unraveling intricate questions related to marketing economics, encompassing areas such as route optimization, sales strategy, and aircraft selection. Within boardrooms, he guides stakeholders through intricate decisions that pave the way for organizational change. Additionally, he provides expert testimony in legal proceedings related to airline strategy, supporting claims for multi-million-dollar damages.

His overarching philosophy, both in and out of the classroom, revolves around the notion that most business decisions are multifaceted. Even when employing marketing analytics as the starting point, the factors of strategy, finance, and human behavior always remain closely intertwined. In his teaching, he prioritizes equipping students with the skills to not only master marketing analytics tools but also to apply them within the complex and messy real-world context. He emphasizes that the most effective leaders possess the ability to streamline problems to their core analysis and then incorporate considerations of strategy, finance, and operations.

Parallel to the diverse business landscape that students face, he has consistently operated across international borders. Following his college years at Penn, he resided in Hungary, providing consultancy services to clients in what were then emerging markets in Eastern Europe. During and subsequent to his MBA program at Yale, he collaborated with airlines spanning various regions worldwide, with extended periods spent working in the Middle East, Europe, and Latin America. He is attuned to recognizing and adapting to distinctions among management and customer cultures.

Education

• MBA, Yale University, 1998
• BA, History, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa, University of Pennsylvania, 1991