Melissa Baker, Ph.D. is the Hospitality and Tourism Management Department Chair at the Isenberg School of Management and the Jaime ’76 and Cindy Pereira Faculty Fellow. She is an award-winning teacher having received the 2023 International Council on Hotel, Restaurant, and Institutional Education Teaching Award (representing 6 worldwide federations and over 350 academic institutions), the 2021 UMass Distinguished Teaching Award (highest teaching award at UMass), the 2020 Poets & Quants Favorite Business Professor, served in the inaugural cohort of the Isenberg Teaching Fellows 2020- 2022. Her research focuses customer experience management, service failure and recovery, and appearance and impression formation. Dr. Baker’s research has been published in top-tier marketing, management, service, and hospitality journals.