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With over 15 years at Disney, Dr. Katie Gottsch shares howher practitioner background shaped her DBA journey at Rollins College and how she transformed real-world organizational challenges into meaningful research.Her dissertation explored how customer feedback influences employees’ ability to deliver on the brand promise, using social media data as a longitudinal research source long before it became mainstream.
Listeners will hear how Katie:
- Turned frontline operational challenges into a rigorous, practice-driven dissertation
- Used customer feedback as a development and motivation tool, not a punitive one
- Identified critical gaps between marketing promises and employee experience
- Designed employee engagement strategies that measurably improved guest interactions
- Applied DBA learning directly to leadership, systems thinking, and decision-making
Why This Episode Matters
This episode offers a powerful example of how DBA researchcan emerge directly from lived professional experience and how scholarly rigor can strengthen, rather than separate from, operational practice. For DBA students, practitioner-scholars, and leaders alike, Katie’s story illustrates what it looks like to use research as a tool for meaningful organizational change.
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LinkedIn: DBA Chronicles
Website: www.dbachronicles.org
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