Tracy Nickl, PhD

About

Tracy is an Assistant Professor at California Lutheran University, where she teaches marketing, branding, advertising and integrated marketing communications, sales and sales management, entrepreneurial sales and marketing, Global Sports Branding and Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) and introduction to business in the MBA, Masters in Sports Management, and undergraduate programs.  Tracy is honored to have been awarded Stukent's professor of the month in 2023. Stukent provides simternships/simulations to over  80 countries, 6,500 institutions, 11,500 educators, and 1 million students. The simternships provide real-life experience and develop skills and knowledge that prepare the students for the world of work and provide a competitive advantage.  Tracy was also honored to receive the 2024 award for excellence and outstanding achievement in teaching, a peer nominated award given by the School of Management at CLU. 

Tracy is also a global senior business executive with 30+ years of driving innovation, organizational growth, and profitability.  She is a visionary leader with expertise in building, expanding, and turning around teams/divisions in diverse settings, including startups and multi-billion dollar corporations.   Skilled at spearheading ambitious initiatives, leveraging technology and data, strengthening strategic alliances, aligning stakeholders around profitable opportunities, and delivering results.  Prior to becoming an Assistant Professor, Tracy was SVP, Head of Client Development & Engagement at Wilmington Trust, a boutique wealth management firm where she did her Ph.D. research and launched a wealth innovation lab; developed and executed a social media plan, as well as an employee personal branding strategy; operated as the marketing business partner; embedded a new sales & relationship engagement model; and developed and led a successful productivity coaching program. Prior to this, Tracy served as a managing director and senior executive for the Asset Servicing Division of BNYMellon, where she was responsible for the America's growth strategy for the largest division of the firm working with financial service firms to re-imagine their technology and overall front, middle, and back offices. Before that, she was a platinum client executive for five of the firm's largest global clients and headed global sales for the wealth management division.  Before joining BNYMellon, Tracy built and led the Southern California Family Office for Wells Fargo and served in many management roles, including: leading investment management teams, trust teams, and national product management for the wealth division. During the first decade of Tracy’s career, she helped launch and build two healthcare companies that were successfully sold. 

She began her Ph.D work in 2017 with the goal of developing her skills and knowledge to become an educator and researcher in personal and corporate branding. Tracy received her Ph.D. in 2023 from the University of Antwerp in Belgium, where she studied how firms and their employees can harness the intersection and integration of employee and firm brands and networks in social media for personal and commercial gain. Her research identified that employees do not typically build intentional brands and networks on social media. When they do, they do so indiscriminately, using third-party content vs. firm content and the firm logo, which poses a threat and an opportunity to firms and their employees. By developing marketing infrastructure and aiding employees in building intentional personal brands, the use of corporate content and branding elements grew exponentially, as did overall amplification and brand reach of both employee personal brands and the corporate brand, and ultimately revenue. This creates a win/win for both the firm and their employees. Tracy continues to research the intersection of personal and corporate branding. She has partnered with the School of Management (SOM) to institute a Brand Ambassador Program that provides students with internships in marketing/branding and teaches them how to build their personal brands and help the SOM amplify and expand its brand. She also builds personal brand development into each of her classes, as she believes that students need to develop these skills to build their personal brands into assets of value to enhance their competitiveness in the job market and world of work in general. 

Tracy serves as a member of the board of trustees and finance committee for Providence Little Company of Mary Hospital Foundation, the board of managers and education committee for the Ketchum Downtown YMCA, and a past board member and hospital liaison for Las Madrecitas for the Orthopedic Institute for Children Hospital (OIC) – a UCLA Affiliate.

She earned her B.S. in math and management from Simmons University, her MBA from Boston College, and her PhD from  the University of Antwerp, Belguim.

Education

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) in Management
University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics, Antwerp Management School & Management Center Innsbruck (MCI), Antwerp, Belgium 

Master of Business Administration (MBA)
Boston College, Wallace E. Carroll School of Management, Chestnut Hill, MA 

Bachelor of Science (BS), Math & Management 
Simmons University, Boston, MA 

Certified Trust & Financial Advisor (CTFA), American Bankers Association, Issued 2000 

Publications

Publications

·       Witman, P. D., Prior, J., Nickl, T., & Mackelprang, S. (2024). The Southwest Airlines Winter Meltdown Case studies on risk, technical debt, operations, passengers, regulators, revenue, and brand. Information Systems Education Journal, 22(5).

·       Witman, P. D., Prior, J., Nickl, T., & Mackelprang, S. (2023). Southwest Airlines Didn’t Crash, but It Nearly Fell Apart…. In Proceedings of the ISCAP Conference ISSN (Vol. 2473, p. 4901).

·       Nickl, T., Dens, N., Lievens, A.(2023). Dress to Impress? Does What You Wear in Your LinkedIn Profile Picture Impact Viewer Perceptions?  Presented at the International Conference on Research in Advertising (ICORIA) and published in the conference proceedings, Bordeaux, France | June 2023

·       Nickl, T., Lievens A., Dens, N. (2023) The Role and Impact of Employees’ Professional Profiles, Content, and Networks on Social Media in Building Personal and Corporate Brands, University of Antwerp, ISBN:978-90-5728-793-0 | June 2023.                             There are three Papers as follows:

o   Personal Brands on LinkedIn – An Asset or Liability for Employees and Their Firms? An Exploratory Analysis of Service Employees’ Professional Profiles and Activities.                                                                                                                        An earlier version of this, Do You Have an Intentional Social Brand?, was presented at the Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Engaged Management Scholarship | 2019 

o   A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words. How Attire in LinkedIn Profile Pictures Influences Perceptions of Credibility, Authenticity, and the Likelihood of Being Engaged for Services

o   The Crucial Role of Employees in Corporate Branding on Social Media

An earlier version of this was presented at the American Marketing Association (AMA) Academic Conference (Aug 2020) and Doctoral Day, University of Antwerp Faculty of Business and Economics and Antwerp Management School (October 2021), Antwerp, Belgium.  

Personal Branding Workshops & Presentations 

In addition to the publications, the following were developed and delivered based on my research.

·       From Invisible to Invincible - Personal Branding and Career Development - Texas Tech, Ciara Riva Costa Rica – virtual workshop for 20 business students. (March 2024)

·       From Invisible to Invincible: Mastering High-Impact Networking and Personal Branding Workshop, delivered a workshop with J. Garcia on networking and personal branding for Prospanica’s Center for Social Justice Committee to help prepare 46 MBA students attending the national Prospanica conference (September 2023)

 I try to apply my research directly to the school of management and other areas of CLU to help students, professors, and staff work on building their brands into assets of value.

·      SOM Dean’s Advisory Council Personal Branding Workshop (January 2024)       Also, conducted 1:1 personal branding sessions to evolve key council members’ LinkedIn profiles and content strategies to enhance branding and amplification.

·      Latino Business Student Group – From Invisible to Invincible: Mastering High-Impact Networking and Personal Branding Workshop delivered with J. Garcia (February 2024)

·      Physics Capstone Class (February 2024)

·      AMA Student Group Personal Branding on LinkedIn (November 2023 and 2022)

In addition to these workshops and presentations, I actively incorporate a branding workshop and assignment (class credit or extra credit depending on course objectives) into each of my undergraduate and MBA courses. This has been well received and added value for the students based on feedback.

Creative Productivity

Based on my research and working with the SOM communications coordinator and the Dean, we implemented a case study. We developed and launched a SOM Brand Ambassador program to help the students build their personal brands, gain key branding skills, and promote the School of Management on and off campus through social media and events. We did this while re-launching a dormant American Marketing Association (AMA) Student Group.  Key highlights and results are outlined below.

Launched SOM Brand Ambassador (SOMBA) Program with the SOM Communications Coordinator (January 2023)

Goal: Amplify the SOM Brand through content developed by and for the students to reach current students (undergraduates, Masters, and MBA students), alums, and future students (high school students and transfer students), and expand the brand. In addition, provide Brand Ambassadors with personal branding skills and internship experience to learn, grow, develop, and build their resumes through running key events, supporting the AMA speaker’s series, and creating content for social media and local businesses.

·      Established the governance structure, grew membership to 20+ ambassadors, launched three platforms: Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts, and stood up required infrastructure and training 

·      Results: During the 2023-2024 academic year, the SOMBAs posted over 118 Instagram videos, two of which went viral (11/27/23 post - 234K views and 11K likes and 2/16/24 post -100 K views and 7K likes), and 81 TikTok and YouTube videos 

·      Established a partnership with Lettuce Social, a micro-influencer and marketing platform for local businesses to develop content, market local businesses, and provide discounts to CLU students, faculty, and staff. The content typically consists of three components: an owner interview, highlights of key foods, and a behind-the-scenes of the kitchen.   20+ Videos were created and posted for local businesses