{"id":237205,"date":"2025-10-27T15:45:04","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T19:45:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=237205"},"modified":"2025-10-27T15:45:04","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T19:45:04","slug":"professor-berger-walliser-tells-magazine-that-a-love-of-the-arts-can-pair-well-with-a-career-in-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2025\/10\/professor-berger-walliser-tells-magazine-that-a-love-of-the-arts-can-pair-well-with-a-career-in-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Professor Berger-Walliser Tells Magazine that a Love of the Arts Can Pair Well with a Career in Business"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Gerlinde Berger-Walliser, head of the Marketing Department, was featured in the quarterly issue of the International Child Art Foundation\u2019s ChildArt Magazine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In the interview Berger-Walliser, an associate professor of business law in the School of Business, talked about growing up in a small town in Germany and loving music from a very young age.<\/p>\n

\u201cMusic played a significant role in church life and was at the heart of my community,\u2019\u2019 she said. \u201cI loved playing music so much that I was seriously considering a career in the performing arts.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

Berger-Walliser played the recorder, flute, and piano, but the recorder was her favorite.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was considering a career as a professional recorder player. I entered competitions, and at age 16, I took private lessons with a professor in a School of Fine Arts, which was a two-hour train ride away from where I lived. I was pretty committed to the arts, but I was also drawn to history, politics, and languages, which got me interested in international law,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Eventually she had to choose between a career in music or one in law, and she chose the latter because it offered more opportunities. Although no one in her family had been a lawyer, her mother\u2019s maiden name is Richter, which means judge in German. And the name Gerlinde is rooted in the term justice.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn some ways it felt like my career was fated,\u2019\u2019 she told the magazine, which serves preteens and teenagers. <\/p>\n

The U.S.-based International Child Art Foundation has a global reach, and focuses on creativity, empathy, and building peace and community. Its signature event is a public festival on The Mall in Washington D.C., showcasing children\u2019s art, performances, and workshops, which draw children from around the world.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe message I wanted to convey is that if, like me, you\u2019re drawn to the arts, you can also have a fulfilling career in business,\u2019\u2019 said Berger-Walliser who was the inaugural director of a new master\u2019s program in Corporate Social Responsibility & Impact (MSSRIB) in the UConn School of Business<\/a>. \u201cThat is a career field that requires empathy and creativity, in addition to business knowledge.\u201d <\/p>\n

Young people who are passionate about arts, develop this skill set, which will serve them well in business.<\/p>\n

\u201cBuilding a product that meets the needs of consumers requires creativity and empathy. You must be able to understand the needs of your customers by putting yourself in their shoes and devising a new approach to addressing those needs,\u2019\u2019 she said. \u201cTo do well in business, you must understand how to \u2018do good\u2019 for workers, customers, and society. This is why we created the MSSRIB program.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cGerlinde was integral in the creation of the MSSRIB program,\u2019\u2019 said professor Kelly Herd, who is now the academic director. \u201cParticularly with the Accelerated MSSRIB program, we want to enable students from within the School of Business and beyond \u2013 in majors like Human Rights, Political Science, Environmental Studies, and Communication \u2013 to find their passion and consider how business can positively impact all aspects of society.\u201d <\/p>\n

UConn undergraduate students from all majors can apply to the Accelerated MSSRIB program. If accepted, they can begin taking MSSRIB graduate courses, and count credits toward both their undergraduate and the MSSRIB degree.<\/p>\n

In her capacity as an adviser, Berger-Walliser often meets students who don\u2019t think that general business is a match for them, but then discover a subspecialty that intrigues them.<\/p>\n

Berger-Walliser found her career foothold while working on her Ph.D. in international business law. Her husband had a job offer that moved the family from Germany to France. She was offered her first academic position in a French business school, where she became interested in interdisciplinary work. She contributed to the emerging field of \u201cproactive law\u2019\u2019 which focuses on law as a force to promote business success by anticipating and addressing potential legal problems before they occur. She later applied that concept to environmental sustainability and corporate social responsibility. Her collaboration with scholars in the United States eventually brought her to UConn in 2012. <\/p>\n

Although this issue of ChildArt Magazine focused on corporate social responsibility and social change, Berger-Walliser said she doesn\u2019t know how she was selected for an interview, but she is enjoying the notoriety.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s nice to be featured in a publication that is so different from an academic journal,\u2019\u2019 she said. \u201cIt makes me feel good that what I do is relevant at UConn but also beyond.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n

\u201cOur leadership team has been very focused on impact, both internal to and external to the premier business research outlets,\u2019\u2019 said Associate Dean David Bergman. \u201cI\u2019m excited that Gerlinde has positively contributed to that effort.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cI was considering a career as a professional recorder player. I entered competitions, and at age 16, I took private lessons with a professor in a School of Fine Arts, which was a two-hour train ride away from where I lived. I was pretty committed to the arts, but I was also drawn to history, politics, and languages, which got me interested in international law.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":121,"featured_media":237206,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1862],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[2105],"class_list":["post-237205","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-busn"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-17 01:49:49","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237205","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/121"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=237205"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237205\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":237207,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/237205\/revisions\/237207"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/237206"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=237205"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=237205"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=237205"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=237205"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=237205"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}