Jessica Word is an associate professor in the School of Public Policy and Leadership at UNLV.

Her research focuses on capacity building in the public and nonprofit sectors. She also has expertise in program evaluation and organization theory.

Her work has been published in numerous journals including, Public Administration Review, Review of Public Personnel Administration, Personnel Review, Public Personnel Management, the Journal for Nonprofit Management, and Spirituality and Religion. She's worked with notable national nonprofits such as the Girl Scouts of the USA, Volunteers of America, and Opportunity Knocks on issues related to employee engagement and burnout. She also co-edited The Nonprofit Human Resource Handbook with Dr. Jessica Sowa.   

Robert Rippee is a nationally recognized authority on the hospitality industry, particularly technology innovation, esports, and business and product development. He is often called upon by local and national media to provide context to emerging trends in hospitality, esports, robotics, artificial intelligence, and other technology applications in the service industry. 

Rippee directs the Hospitality and Esports Lab within UNLV's International Gaming Institute and is former senior vice president of marketing for Las Vegas Sands Corporation. The lab is project-oriented and guides students from an array of disciplines through the innovation process. The lab’s environment is one of the unique learning environments at UNLV, combining the development of disruptive innovation with guidance from subject matter experts in esports, robotics, artificial intelligence, experience design, virtual reality, augmented reality, blockchain, and more. 

Rippee is active as a board advisor, mentor, and consultant to several early stage and mature technology startup companies. He is also a veteran, having served as a pilot in the United States Navy. 

Leith Martin is the executive director of the Troesh Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the Lee Business School.

As director, Martin oversees various entrepreneurship programs — such as the Rebel Venture Fund, the UNLV National Science Foundation I-Corps program, and the academic entrepreneurship curriculum — that are tasked with offering entrepreneurial insight and establishing key relationships with stakeholders within the Las Vegas startup community and beyond.

Martin's expertise in entrepreneurship comes from personal experience. He turned down lucrative job offers after college to join startup global steel supplier Turnipseed International then went on to co-found the Las Vegas-based tech company EQUIINET. Martin served executive roles in both startup companies, expanding operations to India, China, and Western Europe.

He joined UNLV in January 2016. 

Daniel "Danny" Siciliano brings 20 years of industry experience in corporate finance, accounting, and audit planning and reporting to his role as senior lecturer in UNLV's Department of Accounting. 

Prior to joining UNLV, Siciliano served as senior vice president of Treasury and Corporate Finance at International Game Technology, where he designed and executed significant capital market transactions. Siciliano also managed audits in the gaming, real estate, banking, and nonprofit sectors as an audit manager at Deloitte.

Siciliano teaches financial, managerial, and cost accounting courses, and leads the university's accounting internship program. He's also coached student teams to first-place wins at prestigious national accounting competitions. Most recently, UNLV accounting students won first place at the Institute of Management Accountants annual National Student Case Competition for the third year in a row.

Dak Kopec is an architectural psychologist. He is among course instructors for UNLV's Healthcare Interior Design master's program, which blends Architecture and Health Sciences disciplines to teach interior designers to create spaces (such as hospitals, schools, homes, and senior living communities) that cater to aging populations as well as a wide range of physical ailments (for example: visual impairment, mobility issues, and dementia).

Kopec has written five books pertaining to psychological and physical health and a person’s overall well being, has been invited internationally to discuss health and wellbeing within the designed environment, and invited to serve diverse government appointed positions. His interests are in social justice through environmental design and person-centered design for specific health-related conditions. 

Stephen M. Miller is a professor of economics and director of research for the Lee Business School's Center for Business and Economic Research. He served as director of the center from 2015-2021. His research interests span monetary, macroeconomic, and international finance theory and policy; economic growth empirics; financial institutions; and real estate lending. Miller is often called upon by local and national media to comment on economic trends in Southern Nevada, the entire Silver State, the nation, and around the world.

Miller, an educator since 1970, has more than five decades of educational and business experience. Miller came to UNLV as department chair of economics, a position he held from 2001 through 2012. Throughout his career, Miller has guided and advised over 40 graduate students in multiple universities to complete their master's and doctorate degrees.

An author of over 190 journal articles and several books, Miller's research has appeared in a variety of publications, including the Review of Economics and Statistics; Journal of Monetary Economics; Journal of Money, Credit, and Banking; Journal of Banking and Finance; Journal of Development Economics; and Journal of Macroeconomics. He also has given over 150 professional presentations around the nation and world.

Miller was a founder and initial chair of the board of directors of the Economic Club of Las Vegas. The club provides an independent and open forum for discussion and debate on national and global economic issues and public policy.

Steffen Lehmann is a nationally recognized architect, educator, designer and author on sustainable architecture and urban design. Lehmann is often called upon to discuss the relationship between environment and design, and how cities themselves can adapt to climate change.

His research specialties include green urbanism, urban regeneration, and sustainable development.

Starting as a professional architect in his home country of Germany, Lehmann was actively involved in the urban creation of the “New Berlin.” The founder of Steffen Lehmann Architekten Berlin, he has been teaching advanced design studios at leading universities in six countries since 1991. He is also the founding director of two research centers at the University of South Australia, founding director of the Cluster for Sustainable Cities (UK), and Principal Investigator of several large multidisciplinary grants. Lehmann has authored over 19 books with prestigious publishers, countless articles and papers along with numerous publications on sustainable architecture and future cities.

Francine J. Lipman brings to the Boyd School of Law an exceptional record as an accountant, a lawyer, a teacher, and a scholar. After working as a CPA in an international accounting firm and as the chief financial officer for a chain of retail jewelry stores, Lipman turned to law.

As a law student, she has served as the editor-in-chief of the UC Davis Law Review and was recognized as a member of the Order of the Coif. In NYU’s Graduate Tax Law Program, she was a Tax Law Review Scholar. She practiced law with the firms O’Melveny & Myers and Irell & Manella.

Lipman joined the faculties of Chapman University’s School of Business and Economics in 2001 and the William S. Boyd School of Law in 2003. She is an elected member of the American Law Institute, the American College of Tax Counsel, and the American Bar Foundation, and an editor and former committee chair for the Tax Section of the American Bar Association. She has been a visiting professor at UC Hastings College of Law and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. 

In 2016, Nevada Gov. Brian Sandoval appointed Lipman to serve as a tax commissioner. The Nevada Tax Commission consists of eight Nevadans with various professional and business backgrounds. The commissioners supervise the overall administration and operations of the Nevada Department of Taxation. 

Lipman has written extensively on tax and accounting issues for legal journals, including the Wisconsin Law Review, Florida Tax Review, Virginia Tax Review, SMU Law Review, Nevada Law Journal, American University Law Review, Harvard Environmental Law Review, Harvard Latino Law Review, Harvard Journal on Legislation, The Tax Lawyer, The Practical Tax Lawyer, Taxes and Tax Notes. She is a frequent speaker on tax subjects to law and business groups.

Brent Hathaway became dean and Ted and Doris Lee Professor of Business in the Lee Business School on Oct. 1, 2013. He joined UNLV from the University of Wyoming College of Business, where he served as dean for nine years and previously served as interim dean and chair of the management and marketing department.

He co-founded the Wyoming Business Leadership Institute, created an online executive MBA program and college-based career center, and enhanced graduate programs with an emphasis on energy and sustainability. He also raised more than $50 million for facility improvements.

In addition to academic leadership, Hathaway has extensive experience in the business sector. He served in several executive positions including vice president of marketing and sales for aerospace services at Honeywell International and director of marketing for agricultural equipment at Case Corp.

He has published and presented widely about entrepreneurship, leadership, business sustainability, ethics and the economy.

Ruben J. Garcia is a professor of law at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas' William S. Boyd School of Law. Before joining the UNLV faculty in 2011, he was a professor and director of the Labor and Employment Law Program at California Western School of Law in San Diego, where he taught for eight years. He also has held academic appointments at the University of California, Davis School of Law; the University of Wisconsin Law School; and at the University of California, San Diego.

Before beginning his teaching career in 2000, Garcia worked as an attorney for public and private sector labor unions and employees in the Los Angeles area. His scholarship has appeared in a number of leading law reviews, including the Hastings Law Journal, the University of Chicago Legal Forum and the Florida State University Law Review. His first book, published by New York University Press in 2012, is titled Marginal Workers: How Legal Fault Lines Divide Workers and Leave Them Without Protection.

From January 2014 to January 2016, he served as co-president of the Society of American Law Teachers (SALT), and has served on the Board of Directors of the ACLU of Nevada. In Fall 2015, he was selected as a UNLV Leadership Development Academy fellow.  He is a member of the board of directors of the American Constitution Society (ACS), a national nonprofit organization, and an advisor to the Boyd Law Student and Las Vegas Lawyer Chapters of the ACS.