MEET OUR TEAM

Aronté Bennett, PhD
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Associate Dean for UNITAS - Community Engagement
Associate Professor, Marketing & Business Law

Dr. Aronté Bennett is an Associate Professor of Marketing in Villanova University’s School of Business (VSB). She offers courses on market research and consumer behavior, both at the undergraduate and graduate level. Her research focuses on marketplace access and vulnerable, with recent work on the ways that marketing systems can be leveraged to improve the wellbeing of immigrants, low-income consumers and underrepresented minorities. She also examines the ways in which consumers perceive politicians and products. Findings from her research have been published in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing and the International Marketing Review. Her paper, “Shopping While Nonwhite: Racial Discrimination in the Marketplace,” authored with Ronald P. Hill and Kara Daddario, received the Journal of Consumer Affairs 2016 Best Paper Award. She is a member of Faculty Congress and the Praxis Award Committee, is a VISIBLE faculty affiliate and a University Race and Justice faculty associate. Prior to her current role, Dr. Bennett served as the Associate Chair of VSB’s Marketing and Business Law Department

Aronté is a proud graduate of Florida A&M University, earning both her BS and MBA there, and her Ph.D. from New York University. Actively involved in local charities, she recently served as the President of The Junior League of Philadelphia, Inc, a nonprofit organization with more than 300 active members, dedicated to the development of women and community improvement.  Dr. Bennett is also a member of the Board of Directors of the Fund for the Water Works, an organization dedicated to instilling an appreciation for the connections between daily life and the natural environment on the site of Fairmount Water Works, the nation’s first urban water supply system.

Holly Slay Ferraro, PhD
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Faculty Director for Teaching and Research, VSB UNITAS: Office of Community Engagement

Holly Slay Ferraro is an Associate Professor of Management and the Faculty Director for Teaching and Research, VSB UNITAS: Office of Community Engagement at the Villanova University School of Business.  She earned her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from the University of Maryland, College Park.  Before joining the faculty at Villanova, she served on the faculty at Seattle University for 14 years.  

Her research examines how people grapple with dimensions of self (e.g., age, race, gender) in making career decisions.  She is also interested in how organizational and institutional practices contribute to professional identity construction and career judgments.  She aims to add to our knowledge of how growth, learning, and superior performance occur in the face of forces that cause people to question their beliefs about who they are or should be. She has published articles in Human Relations, Human Resource Management, Group and Organization Management, and the Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies. Her research on midlife/midcareer transitions won a Cutting Edge Award from the Academy of Human Resource Development. Before pursuing her doctorate, she held technical and managerial positions in industry for over 12 years.

Zakiya Newton, EdD
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Assistant Director, VSB UNITAS: Office of Community Engagement

With over 10 years of experience in higher education, Zakiya joins us from Lincoln University where she worked as Coordinator of the William K. Dadson Entrepreneurship Center. She holds master’s degrees in Recreation Administration from Southern Illinois University and in Higher Education Leadership from Widener University and is currently completing her doctoral degree at Widener with a research focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), specifically, identifying barriers for inclusion among a traditionally homogenous population.