![Photo of people in the article](https://business.wfu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Otteson-1024x683.jpg)
James Otteson, Professor of Economics and Thomas W. Smith Presidential Chair in Business Ethics, has been named a Favorite Business Professor of the Class of 2020 by Poets & Quants.
Otteson was nominated by Maia Julianne Kennedy (BEM ’20), who wrote:
“Professor James Otteson was my first professor at Wake Forest School of Business during my first year of college. I was seventeen years old and unsure of my professional future, but one thing was clear: I needed to study business. In his class, each session was never structured quite like the one before, but they all had a common theme: business has the potential to add incredible value to society. As the semester continued, Professor Otteson taught me to think critically and holistically about the world of business. I felt comfortable challenging pre-conceived notions about business and learned how to defend my beliefs in his class. As a world-leader in business education and Adam Smith scholar, Professor Otteson’s class remains unlike any other I have taken at Wake Forest and I have valued his inputs ever since. He has continued to mentor me over the years and we still enjoy discussing books on political philosophy or international business in our free time. I will forever be grateful that I had Professor Otteson as a mentor in the School of Business.”