Faculty Profile: Professor Hanna

Professor Rich Hanna has always had a passion for marketing and advertising, and if you’ve ever taken one of his classes you know how deep his knowledge goes on the subject. Professor Hanna started his career in PR after college, but soon transitioned into B2B sales. Dr. Hanna found himself thriving in sales because of his natural salesmanship skills and wide knowledge of the tech products he was selling at the time. After several years in sales, he decided to go back to school for his doctorate (i.e., study more marketing and advertising) at Boston University, and after graduation got his first academic job to teaching at Boston College. 

“It was similar to switching from the Red Sox to the Yankees” he joked when I asked him about the transition. 

After a few years at BC, he then got his next teaching gig at Northeastern, where he stayed for 6 years. Dr. Hanna had always had an underlying desire to teach digital marketing as it became more prevalent, and he finally got his chance 5 years ago when he started teaching at Babson. These days, he’s devoting his time and energy into revamping Babson’s “Marketing Communications” class. The revamped course will be called “Social Media and Advertising Strategy”, and will focus equally on the human behavior side of advertising as well as teaching students about today’s most prevalent platforms. In addition to digital marketing, Dr. Hanna is also teaching the introductory sales course, which allows him to leverage his sales experience to provide students the skills needed to be successful in business development. 
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Dr. Hanna will be recognized very soon for his 5 years of service to Babson, and is looking forward to many more years of teaching our students about the world of marketing and advertising!