Areas of Expertise: Supply Chain Resilience, Critical Minerals and Sectors, Emerging Technologies, Energy Transitions, Digital Trade & AI, Illicit Flows, Pharmaceutical Supply Chains, Retail Operations
Education: Ph.D. Kenan-Flagler Business School, UNC Chapel Hill, USA; MBA, IIT Mumbai, India; B.E., MS University, India
Dr. Mani is a Research Associate Professor at the Biocomplexity Institute, with deep expertise in global supply chains and technology transitions. In addition, she is a Visiting Associate Professor at the SC Johnson College of Business at Cornell University and the Indian School of Business. She has decades-long experience working at the industry-policy interface on critical materials, data+digital trade, emerging technologies, energy systems, and national security. She is a WISC Global Fellow at the Wahba Initiative for Strategic Competition, Development Research Institute, NYU; an Expert Advisor on Critical Supply Chains and Emerging Technologies at Public Spend Forum (PSF); a member of the working group at United Future, and a member of the working group tasked with developing sustainability standards for the textile and apparel sector at the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI).
Her research focuses on how supply chain imperatives drive operational decisions across key sectors, including automotive, electronics, energy, tech, pharmaceuticals, and retail. Her work highlights how businesses within these supply chains will respond to specific market constraints and regulations. Some of her research topics include developing strategic competitiveness in AI and emerging technologies, examining impact of trade policies on national competitiveness and resilience of critical supply chains, developing energy-transition pathways for industrialized and less-developed economies, evaluating the effectiveness of inspection and penalties towards ensuring environmental safety and compliance for energy sector, effective ways to create a secure supply chain in the electronics sector, developing an efficient product portfolio and distribution strategy for specialty drugs and making targeted assortment and labor decisions for retail stores. Her work has been published in leading academic journals like Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations, and Production and Operations Management, and Springer, and she has penned expert opinions for The Conversation, UVA Today, and Darden Report. Her expertise on global supply chains has also been widely featured in the media, including ABC, CBS, NPR, The Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post, Fortune, Forbes, and Business Insider.
Dr. Mani collaborates with industry and policymakers to assess the industry and societal impact of recent legislative efforts on national security, geopolitical considerations, and supply chain sustainability standards. Her work with the US Department of War and the Department of State has resulted in tangible outcomes on public policy. In collaboration with the US Department of War (Defense) and the LMI Research Institute, she developed a data-driven intelligent response toolkit to mitigate counterfeit risk in the weapons system supply chain. As a Franklin Fellow at the Department of State, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, Office of International Labor Affairs, she developed an econometric framework to identify critical chokepoints in supply chains and policy-market incentives that can promote sustainable labor and environmental practices. As Expert Advisor for the Critical Minerals project within the Ripples of Hope Program at the Miller Center, UVA, she worked on the industry-policy incentives that would enable develop resilience in key critical minerals. As the faculty lead for the P3 Impact Award Program run by Concordia, the University of Virginia Darden School Institute for Business in Society, and the U.S. Department of State's Office of Global Partnerships, her research highlighted effective pathways for adding social enterprises to traditional public-private partnerships to unlock deeper community trust, stronger local knowledge, and more sustainable impact. Currently, she is the co-lead for the Consortium for Complex Adaptive Systems, Artificial Intelligence, and Decision Making (CASCAID) at the Biocomplexity Institute.
Dr. Mani teaches electives in Digital Business, Operations Analytics, Retail Operations, Risk and Resilience, and Sustainable Supply Chains for the MBA, EMBA, and Executive Education programs.