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Chris Parker
Chris Parker

Chris Parker

Associate Professor
University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business
Bio

Chris Parker is the Richard S. Reynolds associate professor of business administration at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business where he teaches core Operations Management courses in Darden’s MBA, Executive MBA, and Part-Time MBA programs. His teaching experience also includes courses related to Python programming, business analytics, supply chain analytics, data visualization, statistics, and supply chain design.

His research focuses on the impact of information technology on operations. In this work, he examines both how information flows affect a firm’s decisions but also outcomes on a broad set of stakeholders. He then applies OM and analytics principles to find potential improvements. A significant portion of his work has its roots in inclusive prosperity/Socially-Responsible Development with a particular emphasis on emerging markets. While not always distinct from Socially-Responsible Development, he also has research that is more closely categorized as IT-enabled Business Models, Digital Financial Services, and Supply Chain Coordination. His work has appeared in leading operations management and information systems journals including Management Science, Manufacturing & Services Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, and the Journal of Management Information Systems.

Prior to Darden, Chris was a Kogod Research Professor and Associate Professor of Information Technology and Analytics at the Kogod School of Business at American University, and an Assistant Professor of Supply Chain Management at the Smeal College of Business at Pennsylvania State University. Chris also had the pleasure to be a Visiting Professor at Darden and at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. Chris received his PhD in Management Science and Operations from London Business School in 2012.


Ambassadors at Work: Building and Evaluating a Relational Voter Engagement Program

Block Power’s model recruits, trains, and compensates local “ambassadors” to contact people in their own networks, then measures impact with validated turnout. I’ll share how we designed the operations (recruitment funnels, QA, and targeting), experimented with incentives (cash and points), and evaluated outcomes (civic engagement and voting). In our 2024 pilot covering around 80,000 potential voters, we estimate a 0.9 percentage-point ITT lift in voter turnout (p = 0.085). I will also preview our plans for 2026 and beyond. The takeaway is a repeatable playbook: combine referral-style targeting with incentive design over a longer-period to deliver reliable turnout gains and transparent ROI for civic impact.

The INFORMS PRIDE Forum and INFORMS Minority Issues Forum (MIF) are co-sponsoring this session.

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