Oleta Beard
Marketing Lecturer, Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Leta Beard is an award winning educator who specializes in sales and marketing management. She has been on the faculty of the Foster Business School since 1996. During her tenure, she has won numerous teaching awards including the Wells Fargo Faculty Award for Undergraduate Teaching in 2007, the Distinguished Contribution to Lifelong Learning Award in 2009 and the Undergraduate Professor of the Year for Marketing in 2006. Beard is also the lead faculty member in the Certificate in Marketing Management program. Before accepting her current position at the University of Washington, Beard worked for AT&T Network Systems (Lucent Technologies) for more than 12 years. She served in various marketing capacities, winning several national and regional marketing awards. She has an M.B.A. in finance and marketing from the University of Washington.

Rick McPherson
Management Lecturer, Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Richard McPherson has 25 years of business and industry experience including serving as a Vice President at T-Mobile and at AT&T Broadband, and as a Partner in a small consulting firm. He has been a leader of various aspects of 7 different mergers, acquisition and divestiture projects, ranging in scope from $2.5 billion to $60 billion in value. He has started 4 different business units within large corporations, and has also been involved with small business and non-profit strategic planning and operations improvement. He is currently a Lecturer at the University of Washington where he teaches courses in management, strategy, and leadership and is an Adjunct Professor of Marketing at Seattle University.

Joe Paperman
Accounting Lecturer, Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Joe Paperman has 25 years of combined business and academic experience specializing in Finance and Accounting. He has been on the faculty at the University of Washington since 1995 serving both as an assistant professor and part time lecturer. He has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago and adjunct professor at Seattle University. Prior to teaching, Joe worked in the grocery industry as a Controller, Director of Finance and CFO, specializing in financial distress turnarounds for firms with revenues ranging from $15 million to $3 billion. In more recent years, Joe was the Controller for Garden Botanika during its bankruptcy liquidation and Senior Financial Analyst for Emeritus Corporation.

Instructors are subject to change.