New Faculty Highlight: Assistant Professor Peter Thurston Carrera

Six new faculty members have joined The James & Gail Ellis School of Business Leadership this fall semester. In this series, meet the faculty that are bringing new perspectives and expertise to the school.

Meet Peter Thurston Carrera, assistant professor within the department of Marketing, Information, and Decision Sciences. Carrera earned his Ph.D. in operations management from the Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University and his bachelor’s from the Nolan School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University.

“I am ecstatic to join Ellis. The quality of the students, the faculty within my department and school, and the university’s major support and pursuit of research all made me excited to join the University of New Mexico,” said Carrera. “I am also very excited to serve a minority and Hispanic serving institution university with a large Indigenous community!”

This semester, Carrera is teaching two sections of the Introduction to Operations Management course, the starting point of Ellis’ Operations Management Concentration.

“I’m excited to show students the wonderful world of operations and help them realize why understanding the ‘core’ of any business/organization is so important to success,” said Carrera.

Carrera’s research is focused on service quality, operational excellence, and learning in service operations. He conducts empirical and field-based research in collaboration with major travel and tourism companies. In addition to his research, Carrera brings a decade of experience in operations and leadership roles, including time at Accor Hotels, Sabre, and NASA, to Ellis.

“Operations professionals get things done, they plan and execute delivery of the service or product a company offers. Regardless of what role in business students pursue or end up in, they will be interacting with and relying on operations professionals. I hope that Ellis’ operations coursework will help students better understand what they do and how to best work with them.”

Outside of the classroom, Peter loves to play basketball, read science fiction and fantasy, visit his family in Panama, and cook. He is especially excited to learn about New Mexican cuisine and to make his own green and red chile!

Peter enjoys connecting with students in his courses, where the learning is truly reciprocal. He learns from his students just as much as they learn from him.

“I love hearing my student’s aspirations and goals, supporting their plans to pursue them, and getting to see them achieve what they want to do in life! I learn a ton from my students, whether it be about local organizations, business ideas they have, or new music!”