People over profit: Management professor Jyoti Bachani is a leading voice of humanistic management, a people-centered approach that prioritizes human dignity and well-being. Now, through the Fulbright Specialist Program, she will bring her expertise to Rapuir, India. / Photo by Francis Tatem
As a Fulbright Specialist, Jyoti Bachani Will Bring Her Improv and Management Expertise to Central India
A professor of Management and a poet, Bachani will travel to the Indian Institute of Management Raipur to train faculty and students in humanistic management. Fulbright “enhances understanding in ways that formal diplomacy can never accomplish," she says.
Jyoti Bachani’s journey to becoming a Fulbright Specialist began with laughter. A professor of Management at Saint Mary’s, Bachani was on sabbatical in India in 2024 as a Scholar-in-Residence at the Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Calcutta. While there, she was invited to IIM Raipur in central India to deliver a keynote speech and lead a workshop for faculty on humanizing management through improvisational theater exercises. Bachani is one of the leading voices on humanistic management, a people-centered approach to business that prioritizes human dignity and well-being over profit; she quite literally co-wrote the books on the topic.
Her talk and improv workshop certainly left an impression. Bachani says. “They laughed out loud enough that they essentially told me, ‘Come back for more! Teach us how to do this in our classrooms!’”
In 2025, the director of IIM Raipur, Ram Kakani, stopped by Saint Mary’s to meet with Bachani and Donald Gibson, dean of the School of Economics and Business Administration, to discuss collaboration between institutions. A few months later, Bachani’s colleagues at IIM Raipur submitted a proposal for a Fulbright Specialist, requesting Bachani by name. Now, she is set to return to Raipur for a month sometime in 2026 or 2027 to train and equip business faculty to incorporate humanistic management and interdisciplinary creative practice into their classrooms.
Bachani is now the second SMC faculty member to take part in the Fulbright Specialist Program. For decades, the program has offered academics and professionals the opportunity to participate in short-term, project-based exchanges at host institutions worldwide. Saint Mary’s first Fulbright Specialist was Rosana Barragán, director of the MFA in Dance. In 2024, Barragán traveled to lead a Fulbright project focused on somatic movement and sacred water sources.
Of course, there have been plenty of Saint Mary’s faculty who have taken part in the multi-month Fulbright U.S. Scholar program. In recent years, Fulbright Scholars have included associate professor of Kinesiology Chi-An Emhoff, professor of Global and Regional Studies Helga Lenàrt-Cheng, and professor of Marketing Saroja Subrahmanyan. In addition, María Luisa Ruiz, a Spanish and Latin American literature professor, traveled to Mexico in 2021 through a Fulbright-Hays Cultural Exchange Award. And Ashley Cross, Director of the Center for International Programs, took part in a two-week seminar in South Korea through the Fulbright International Education Administrators Award.
The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program “is the flagship program, and for good reason,” says Elizabeth Gallagher, director of the Office of Research. “Still, it can be really time-intensive. The program usually requires the scholar to be on sabbatical or have the ability to take leave in order to participate.”
The Specialist Program, by contrast, requires a shorter time commitment while still offering cross-cultural exchange. “Ultimately, it enables our scholars to put their names out there, making international connections and representing Saint Mary's by conducting their great scholarship,” Gallagher says.
Interdisciplinary Possibilities
Bachani began teaching at Saint Mary’s in 2008, just a few years before she co-founded the U.S. and India chapters of the International Humanistic Management Association. A poet and improviser, she has spent much of her career promoting “the use of the arts to humanize management.”
“Poetry helps us make sense of the world while allowing room for interpretation and engagement,” Bachani says. “Engaging with paradox and ambiguity is an essential part of managing. But management has been, in some ways, hijacked by economics, prioritizing profits and productivity over societal well-being and human dignity. We have become ‘human resources’ for organizations. I think there’s something fundamentally wrong with that. We need to focus on organizing as an essential human activity that enables us to accomplish together what no one can do alone.”
Bachani has regularly presented on these topics at the annual Academy of Management conference and at institutions around the globe. Her reputation and connections in humanistic management led to this Fulbright project. While the details are still being finalized, she expects to be at IIM Raipur for a few weeks in the year ahead, running hands-on, interdisciplinary workshops for faculty and doctoral students.
Bachani first participated in a Fulbright Fellowship in 2012, traveling to India to research jugaad, or frugal innovation. For her, the fact that this kind of cross-cultural exchange still exists is heartening.
“After all these decades, it still is a well-funded government program that allows people from over 160 countries to travel, live, work, learn about other cultures, and share their own,” she says. “We serve as citizen ambassadors, and the mutual travels enhance understanding between the countries in ways that formal diplomacy can never accomplish.”
For Bachani, one of the most “mind-opening” aspects of her first Fulbright was presenting at the interdisciplinary Fulbright Conference. “I usually present my research at management conferences to other business professors, but this allowed me a chance to share research ideas with music, history, math, chemistry, and film professionals,” she says. Bachani has also been encouraged by how many SMC faculty have reached out to her in recent years, inspired to do their own Fulbrights. “Suddenly, I was talking to professors from other departments that I might not interact with normally.”
That’s the power of Fulbright—and a tight-knit liberal arts college, Bachani emphasizes. “Saint Mary’s allows for this atmosphere where a management professor can talk to a chemistry professor or a dance professor, and they can work together to educate the whole human being. And it’s exciting to me that, between 2012 and now, so many more people across disciplines have been awarded Fulbrights. It’s definitely become an institutional strength for us.”
For faculty interested in applying for a Fulbright Specialist or other fellowship, the Office of Research is offering a workshop on Friday, April 24, 2026, from 1:30 – 2:15 pm. RSVP here.
