Professor Michael Ratajczyk leads Saint Mary's faculty in microeconomics, business intelligence, and data analytics, partnering with companies and organizations, attending and speaking at conferences, and keeping up on emerging trends and employer expectations of graduates.
Professor Ratajczyk is currently an active fellow for an artificial intelligence project connected to Wiley Education and recently won an award for his effort in developing programs, student-centered pedagogy, and development efforts for the school.
He tirelessly seeks to advance the university's footprint in the business world locally, regionally, and internationally and help students reach their goals. Professor Ratajczyk is also a featured faculty at the Woodrow Wilson Institute for his work in advancing data science pedagogy for business and is a member of the Harvard Business Review Advisory.
Professor Ratajczyk, an alum of Saint Mary's, came back after spending 12 years in various analytical, negotiation, and leadership roles in a multi-national S&P 100 company.
In addition to leading the company's business intelligence efforts, Professor Ratajczyk led a team of 200 purchasing, supply chain, and operations analysts and worked side by side with executive vice presidents in sales and purchasing to optimize pricing and cost strategies. He frequently traveled to Asia, negotiating with customers and suppliers, directly using the data he analyzed in the data warehouse he built.
His work also included training, developing, leading, and serving international project management teams of up to 250 individuals in product management, purchasing, supply chain, sales, and negotiation roles with a catalog of 1.1 million products and 300,000 active customers.
His focus was placed in the following areas.
- Performing cost audits on more than 2,000 suppliers representing more than 1,100,000 products across more than 40 countries and 200 materials
- Actively supporting buy-side negotiations for unit cost reduction, cost denial, delay, and deflection
- Providing sales with training, customer interaction for price increase deployment and price decrease defense
- Conducting profitability performance studies on transportation costs related to market conditions
- Systems development to make the tools needed to effectively analyze the company's data and share it with executive leadership
Professor Ratajczyk has a certification in business intelligence from TWDI and earned his B.A. in international business and management from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota and an M.S. in international business from Saint Mary's University of Minnesota. He studied European economics at Saint Mary's University in London, England.
In his spare time, he enjoys international travel, designing and playing computer games, and landscaping his backyard.