Preethika Sainam, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Global Business
Areas of Expertise:
Quantitative Marketing, Marketing Strategy Under Uncertainty, Channel Structure and
Coordination, Optimal Pricing Strategies
Courses:
Analytic Decision Making, Business Informatics
Professional Bio:
Preethika Sainam, Ph.D., teaches quantitative marketing classes that enhance the
analytical piece of the MBA students’ experience at Thunderbird School of Global
Management. She developed her passion for analytic decision making early in her career
as a banquet sales manager for Sheraton Hotels & Resorts in Chennai, India. Personal
computers were a new tool for non-IT businesses at the time in South India, and Dr.
Sainam seized the opportunity. “That job helped me identify my love for data mining
in large datasets to help understand customer preferences and sales trends, which
ultimately led to my Ph.D.,” she says.
ABOUT THUNDERBIRD:
Thunderbird is a top-ranked school of global
business with nearly 70 years of experience
in developing leaders with the global mindset,
business skills and social responsibility
necessary to create real, sustainable value
for their organizations, communities and the
world. Dedicated to preparing students to be
global leaders and committed global citizens,
Thunderbird was the first graduate business
school to adopt an official Professional Oath of
Honor. Thunderbird’s global network of alumni
numbers 45,000 graduates in 147 nations
worldwide. The school is sought out by graduate
students, working professionals and companies
seeking to acquire the skills necessary for
success in today’s global economy.
Educating global leaders
who create sustainable
prosperity worldwide.
Dr. Sainam says these techniques are now ubiquitous in everyday business. The goal of
her teaching is to help students understand and apply statistical techniques to improve
the quality of managerial decisions. Her Analytic Decision Making course starts with
basic statistics and moves on to cover frequently used managerial models. Her Business
Informatics course provides an applied overview of the topic, including the role of large
databases and sophisticated analytical models of information systems. Her classes
incorporate mini cases and hands-on learning activities so students have a mastery of
the statistical techniques they learn. “They see how to use them in real-world business
settings,” she says. Dr. Sainam also inserts humor into her lectures, something she
learned by watching her father prepare for the lectures he delivered as a medical school
professor in Chennai. “Given that I teach relatively dry quantitative classes, I have heard
from many students that they love the humor breaks,” she says.
Prior to joining Thunderbird’s fulltime faculty in 2013, Dr. Sainam served as Chief
Marketing Officer for a startup in Portland, Oregon. In this capacity she helped craft
the firm’s marketing strategy so it could procure funding. Earlier she was an assistant
professor at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, Bloomington, where she
engaged in scholarly research and taught marketing research.
Dr. Sainam earned a Ph.D. in marketing and a master’s degree in economics from
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She also holds a master’s degree in
management information sciences and an MBA from the University of Texas at Dallas. Her
undergraduate degree is from Purdue University, where she was a Dean’s Scholar. Her
research has been published in Marketing Science and the Journal of Marketing Research,
the top publications in her field. Originally from India, Dr. Sainam speaks Tamil, Hindi,
French and English.
1 Global Place • Glendale, Arizona • 85306-6000 USA • +1 602 978-7100 • 800 457-6966 • thunderbird.edu