Faculty

Tim Davis

Timothy
L.
Davis

Associate Professor of Leadership and Public Policy
Garrett L027

Tim Davis is an associate professor of leadership and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.  A clinical psychologist, Davis helps students, executives and teams increase their effectiveness by building resiliency, strengthening community and expanding self-awareness. At Batten, he teaches courses on team leadership, group dynamics and emotional resilience.  

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Jim Detert

James
R.
Detert

Professor of Business Administration and Public Policy

Jim Detert is a professor of public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the John L. Colley Professor of Business Administration in the Leadership and Organizational Behavior area at the University of Virginia's Darden Graduate School of Business Administration. Detert's research focuses on workplace courage, ethical decision-making and behavior, improvement-oriented voice (why people speak up or stay silent at work) and other leadership-related topics.

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Kyle Dobson

Kyle S. H.
Dobson

Assistant Professor of Leadership and Public Policy
Garrett Hall L004A

As of Fall 2023, Kyle Dobson is an assistant professor of leadership and public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Dobson takes an interdisciplinary approach to organizational studies, focusing primarily on occupations where employees sacrifice their well-being in service to others. His work has focused on police departments primarily, with expansion to schools and other organizations. 

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Melissa Thomas-Hunt

Melissa
Thomas-Hunt

John D. Forbes Distinguished Professor of Business Administration and Professor of Public Policy

Melissa Thomas-Hunt is a professor of public policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and the John Forbes Distinguished Professor of Business Administration at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia. Thomas-Hunt focuses on leadership, team dynamics, and negotiations and her research studies the factors that unleash, leverage, and amplify the contributions made by individuals, particularly women, underrepresented individuals, and numerical minorities. 

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Sophie Trawalter

Sophie
Trawalter

Batten Family Bicentennial Teacher-Scholar Leadership Professor of Public Policy and Professor of Psychology

Sophie Trawalter, Batten Family Bicentennial Teacher-Scholar Leadership Professor of Public Policy at the Frank Batten School of Leadership and Public Policy and professor of psychology at the University of Virginia, studies phenomena related to social diversity, specifically how people navigate intergroup contact and intergroup contexts, with a particular focus on how people develop competencies and learn to thrive in diverse spaces.

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