Dr. Merians Penaloza has an MBA, with a focus on marketing and analytics, and a DBA, with a focus on data privacy and consumer motivation. Her research is looking at why people choose to protect (or not!) their online data privacy. She taught at Baruch for 9 years and is now teaching in the School of Professional Studies. In her pre-academic life, she worked as a programmer, writer, project manager, data analyst, and digital marketer (usually all at the same time, in the same company). In her free time, she is a freelance writer and data analyst.