Episode 052: Leadership with Heart: Insights from Disney with Dr. Katie Gottsch
About this episode
Dr. Katie Gottsch discusses her DBA journey and how her experiences at Disney informed her research on customer feedback and employee engagement.
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…
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- Episode 055: Global Doctoral Leadership: The GEM DBA, Multicultural Networks & The Practitioner-Scholar Journey
- Episode 054: From Practice to Scholarship: Doing Timely, High-Impact Research Through the DBA with Kimberly Bright
- Episode 053: Reinventing Purpose: Energy Transition, Academic Rigor & the Freedom to Learn with Dr. Helen Croskell
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