Costello College of Business News

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with the Senior Vice President for Contracts and Pricing at a major government contracting firm and her team about commercial buying. The conversation reinforced a point that is easy to miss in policy discussions: commercial solutions require commercial behavior. That means government must be willing to engage the market differently, and industry must be willing to explain, candidly and constructively, what commercial buying entails. Without that mutual adjustment, commercial acquisitions risk remaining a policy imperative rather than becoming a practical success for both sides.

When student Dominic Jones met the Bognet Construction team at one of George Mason's career fairs, he saw an opportunity to broaden his horizons.

Video recordings of the three-part virtual discussion on Resellers and Value-Added Resellers (VARS) in federal IT acquisition. Traditionally, these intermediaries have provided more than hardware and software distribution, adding integration, configuration, compliance, and lifecycle support. Yet policymakers continue to question whether reseller markups reflect genuine value or simply increase costs through pass-through pricing. The discussion focuses on the question: What does “value added” mean when government buys capability instead of products?

When crowdfunding platform Kickstarter started allowing creators to put environmental pledges front and center, George Mason University accounting professor Yi Cao saw a unique opportunity. His co-authored research shows how “going green” turned out to be an impactful business choice with financial, operational and, yes, environmental implications for entrepreneurs and customers.

Gift from Northern Virginia entrepreneur and 22nd Century Technologies CEO Anil Sharma and his wife, Anupama, will expand opportunities for students, entrepreneurs, and the region’s innovation community.

Gabriella Lemus, a sophomore accounting major, came into the Costello College of Business with a head start. Now she's tackling her first summer internship.

As workers enter new organizational roles, join new employers, or transition into different fields, they often experience emotional turmoil associated with changes in their professional identity. To ease the adjustment, they can train their “transition muscles” by learning from past experiences and anticipating future changes, suggests a new book chapter from George Mason University management professor Sarah Wittman.

At the beginning of 2026, Mike Derrios, MBA ’06, returned home to the Costello College of Business at George Mason University as the executive director of the Greg and Camille Baroni Center for Government Contracting.

When Q Miceli saw that the Costello College of Business at George Mason University was offering the Executive Mentoring Program as part of the Costello MBA, she was all in. “I had just hit a point in my career where I started supervising more people and really wanted to get some perspective,” she says.

This session focuses on how the RFO will affect industry as they grapple with changing terminology, regulation vs. guidance, and how they should be thinking differently about market signals coming from the new policy

Retail investor attention creates an incentive for firms to present earnings that satisfy investors' expectations using accounting discretion. Such a “numbers game” – the use of legally permissible accounting practices to influence reported earnings – makes investor attention an economic force influencing corporate reporting decisions, argues finance professor Lei Gao of George Mason University.

When Faris Madani started at George Mason University, he opted to major in economics, assuming there were limited classroom learning opportunities for someone aspiring for a career in business. It was not until he took the Survey of Accounting course with Peggy Tsirigotis, assistant accounting area chair at the Costello College of Business, that his perception began to change.