BACKGROUND
Prior to entering higher education, Dr. Turner was in business where she held senior executive, management and marketing roles in the cable television and advertising industries across the United States, including New York City, Chicago, Los Angeles, Washington, DC, as well as New Jersey, Connecticut, and Tennessee. Her experience included positions in general management, regional and field marketing leadership, and account management. She transitioned to leading SMEs and entrepreneurial ventures in non-profit consulting, fashion merchandising and design, hospitality, fintech, and retail, as well as and her own candy business. After returning to the west coast for a marketing consulting role with a Silicon Valley startup, Dr. Turner managed the first San Franciso Bay Area location for a national gourmet chocolate café and retail store operation. She began teaching a marketing class in a fashion merchandising and design program. Finding she enjoyed teaching, Dr. Turner stepped down from her management role to teach full-time at a small, undergraduate business school and as an adjunct at a nearby graduate program during which time she earned her doctorate in business. Subsequently, Dr. Turner returned to the east coast to teach in undergraduate business and MBA programs at universities in Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and again in California, before joining Ithaca College’s School of Business faculty in fall 2023.
TEACHING & SCHOLARSHIP
Dr. Turner’s teaching philosophy is to center on each student's uniqueness, so she works to make her classes and pedagogy as responsive and individualized as possible. Her focus is on helping students to think creatively, critically, strategically, thoughtfully, and empathetically. Her courses emphasize practical, experiential application of course concepts, and she attempts to infuse fun into the classroom. Most importantly, Dr. Turner teaches that any entity’s most valuable asset is people!
Dr. Turner’s research focuses on consumers and the value they derive from use of modular product configurators to co-design personalized, customized, and/or individualized offerings. She studies the influence individual thinking style has on these interactions with providers. Dr. Turner spent the last two summers taking courses on artificial intelligence (AI) and human interaction with the goal of understanding how AI works so she can explore its impact on consumer perceived value of co-design experiences.
EDUCATION
Dr. Turner earned a DBA from Grenoble Ecole de Management in France; a Master’s Degree in Behavioral and Decision Sciences (MBDS) and a Graduate Certificate in Social, Cognitive & Affective Neuroscience (SCAN) from the University of Pennsylvania; an MBA in Marketing and Business Policy from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business; and an AB, cum laude, in Social Studies from Harvard University.
A FEW MORE TIDBITS …
Dr. Turner has a few favorite sayings that exemplify her worldview:
- People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel. | Maya Angelou
- Vision is the art of seeing what is invisible to others. | Jonathan Swift
- Without faith, nothing is possible. With it, nothing is impossible. | Mary McLeod Bethune
In her spare time, Dr. Turner enjoys going to the movies, watching thriller, horror, and film noir films, visiting museums and historical sites, making her own earrings, painting and drawing, interior decorating, and baking - especially German chocolate cake and Quaker Oats oatmeal cookies. Also, she loves cats, cute stuffed animals, anything red, and is an avid enthusiast of Elton John and Sesame Street’s Elmo!
COURSES TAUGHT
- Principles of Marketing
- Senior Seminar Marketing Capstone
- The Consumer Co-Design Experience
- Digital Marketing
- Marketing in a Digital World (MBA)
- The Business of Entertainment (MBA)
SELECTED PUBLICATIONS & CONFERENCE PAPERS
Tiruneh, M. A., Suzic, N., & Turner, F. (2026). Framework for understanding design heuristics and sources of bias in new product development. International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management . Advance online publication. Retrieved fromhttps://jged.uns.ac.rs/index.php/ijiem/article/view/2144.
Tiruneh, M. A., Suzic, N., & Turner, F. (2026). When modularity meets mind: Product innovation through a behavioral lens. International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management , 17 (2), 241-249.
Turner, F., Watts, M., & Suzic, N. (2025, September). Engaging consumer uncertainty and creativity during the mass customization co-design experience. In Proceedings of the Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production Conference and the World Mass Customization & Personalization Conference (pp. 153-164). Cham: Springer Nature Switzerland.
Tiruneh, M. A., Suzic, N., & Turner, F. (2024). Identification of common heuristics and cognitive biases in product development: Initial findings from the literature. In Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Customization and Personalization (MCP 2024): The Power of Customization and Personalization in the Digital Age (pp. 238-245). Faculty of Technical Sciences, University of Novi Sad.
Zaima, J. K., Yacobian, M. M., & Turner, F. (2024). Investor perception of corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) and investing decisions. Journal of Accounting & Finance (2158-3625) , 24 (4).
Turner, F., & Watts, M. (2023, August). Can the mass customization co-design toolkit help healthcare practitioners reduce bias and achieve better patient outcomes? In Production Processes and Product Evolution in the Age of Disruption: Proceedings of the 9th Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production Conference (CARV2023) and the 11th World Mass Customization & Personalization Conference (MCPC2023), Bologna, Italy, June 2023 (p. 164). Springer Nature.
Yacobian, M. M., Turner, F., & Zaima, J. K. (2022). At the intersection of corporate social irresponsibility, gender, and race: Millennial and Gen Z consumer loyalty. Archives of Business Research , 10 (2), 186-211.
Turner, F., & Watts, M. (2021, November). Looking for patterns: A comparative analysis of mass customization co-design toolkits for tangible versus intangible offerings. In Proceedings of the Changeable, Agile, Reconfigurable and Virtual Production Conference and the World Mass Customization & Personalization Conference (pp. 851-859). Cham: Springer International Publishing.
Turner, F., Merle, A., & Gotteland, D. (2020). Enhancing consumer value of the co-design experience in mass customization. Journal of Business Research , 117 , 473-483.
Yacobian, M. M., Turner, F., & Zaima, J. K. (2020) The gender effect on millennials’ perception of corporate social irresponsibility and consumer behavior. Journal of Scholastic Inquiry: Business, 11 (2), 53-87.
Turner, F., & Welch, I. (2019). The mixed reality toolkit as the next step in the mass customization co-design experience. International Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management , 10 (2), 191.
Hager, M. J., Turner, F., & Dellande, S. (2019). Academic and social integration: psychosocial support and the role of developmental networks in the DBA. Studies in Continuing Education , 41 (2), 241-258.
Turner, F. (2018, June). The individualization of mass customization: Exploring the value of individual thinking style through consumer neuroscience. In Customization 4.0: Proceedings of the 9th World Mass Customization & Personalization Conference (MCPC 2017), Aachen, Germany, November 20th-21st, 2017 (pp. 439-450). Cham: Springer International Publishing.