Anthony Molisani, Ph.D., M.P.H.

Dr. Molisani earned his doctorate in Social and Behavioral Sciences in 2015. He currently works for Avanade, a company providing advisory services to Microsoft users.

 

What brought you to VCU and the PhD in Social & Behavioral Sciences, in particular?

After finishing my MPH in Health Management and Policy, I moved back to Rochester, New York, where I was substitute teaching and managing a restaurant and nightclub while applying for public health and research roles. I was still figuring out what direction I wanted my career to take, but I knew I was interested in problem solving and applied research.

During my MPH at Drexel, I worked closely with my advisor and department chair, Dr. Ulmer, who first introduced me to behavioral science and organizational psychology. One day she emailed me to say she had been asked to recommend potential doctoral students to VCU’s Social & Behavioral Health program and that she immediately thought of me. I had a tremendous amount of respect for her mentorship and trusted her judgment completely, so her recommendation carried a lot of weight for me.

Academically, the program made sense. My undergraduate degree was in biochemistry with minors in philosophy and social psychology, and my MPH focused heavily on program evaluation and quantitative analysis. What drew me to the PhD was the opportunity to lean more into behavioral theory and the “why” behind outcomes, not just what works and how. I was also interested in the idea of applying marketing, influence, and behavioral science for social good, which aligned closely with what the SBH program emphasized.

Tell us a little bit about what you do in your role at Avanade.

I’m part of Avanade’s Organizational Change Management and Workplace Experience Advisory team. Our practice focuses on helping employees adopt and benefit from new technology and new ways of working. Right now, much of that work centers on AI adoption.

I lead our People Analytics offerings, where we use behavioral theory, system activity data, and primary data collection to understand how employees experience technology, what beliefs and barriers affect adoption, and how those factors impact organizations.

For example, in our AI adoption work, we developed measures grounded in frameworks like the Theory of Planned Behavior, Technology Acceptance Model, Health Belief Model, and Transtheoretical Model. We combine these behavioral constructs with actual usage data to model what predicts adoption and design more targeted interventions. That includes identifying perceived barriers, tailoring use cases, and finding internal change champions who can help drive adoption.

In many ways, it is very similar to public health. We conduct needs assessments, design behavioral interventions, and evaluate outcomes. The difference is that the population is employees instead of patients.

How did your education in the Ph.D. program prepare you for what you're doing now?

Honestly, I use all of it.

One definition of innovation that stuck with me is taking methods from one domain and applying them to another. That is exactly what I do now. The population and context have changed, but the process is largely the same. Employee experience and technology adoption are not fundamentally different from population health and behavior change.

My PhD gave me a strong foundation in behavioral theory, qualitative and quantitative research methods, measurement design, and program evaluation. Those skills translate directly into my work today. Many corporate environments move quickly and are not used to the structure and rigor of outcomes research, so there is often a balancing act between practical timelines and academic quality. The PhD prepared me to navigate that tension and still deliver meaningful insights.

What do you like best/find most rewarding about your current role?

Two things stand out.

First, I enjoy bringing applied behavioral science into spaces where it is not commonly used. When colleagues and clients start adopting theory-driven language and approaches, it changes how teams think about problems and design solutions. There are only a couple of us with similar academic backgrounds, and we love seeing these methods become part of standard practice.

Second, I find it rewarding to see impact in real time. In public health and academic research, outcomes often take years to emerge. In consulting, we usually have about twelve weeks to assess, analyze, and implement behavioral change. Seeing theories and methodologies translate into measurable results on that timeline is both fascinating and gratifying.

At my core, I have always been about problem solving and building a broad toolkit I can apply to whatever challenge is in front of me, whether that is cancer prevention, research impact, employee experience, or AI adoption.