The AMA Foundation (AMAF) is proud to celebrate Kevin D. Bradford, Professor of Teaching at University of California, Irvine, as the recipient of the 2025 Williams-Qualls-Spratlen Multicultural Mentoring Award of Excellence.
The WQS Multicultural Mentoring Award recognizes world-class marketing scholars and mentors of people of color while carrying on the legacy of three legendary educators: Jerome Williams, William (Bill) Qualls, and Thaddeus H. Spratlen. Award recipients have a sustained career commitment to mentoring as well as a significant positive impact on their mentees’ careers. Moreover, through their mentees, they have advanced research and education on issues where racial, ethnic, and cultural diversity intersect with the discipline and practice of marketing. View a list of past winners here.
About the Winner
Kevin D. Bradford is a Professor of Teaching at the Paul Merage School of Business. Kevin’s academic experience culminated with his Ph.D. from the University of Florida, and his industry experience includes five years in a relationship management role with International Business Machines. Kevin was recently named an Inclusive Excellence Professor for UCI and appointed a Fellow in UCI’s Faculty Academy for Teaching Excellence. Over his career, Kevin served on numerous boards, including
the Board of Directors for the American Marketing Association, where he served on numerous committees, culminating with the honor of serving as the Chairman of the Board for the American Marketing Association. Additionally, he has served as Faculty Advisor for the Marketing Doctoral Student Association, as the Associate Dean of the Undergraduate Program at the Paul Merage School of Business, as Faculty Director for Future Leaders Initiative at the Merage School of Business, and as a faculty advisor and mentor (both officially and unofficially) to numerous students across a wide variety of instrumental academic and career goals and milestones.
Kevin’s research focuses on developing an understanding of significant issues within the marketing system and its relationship to society. This system can be viewed as consisting of three sets of actors – marketers, customers, and public policymakers. To this point, his work has centered on all three; the marketing domain (e.g., salespeople and the development of relationships), the customer domain (e.g., buyer-seller relationships), and public policy domain (e.g., firearm diversion). He has research published in the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Marketing Letters, and Journal of Public Policy and Marketing.
“Professor Bradford exemplifies the rare combination of scholarly excellence and transformative mentorship that defines truly outstanding academic leaders,” shared fellow UC Irvine faculty, Professor Hope Jensen Schau. “What truly distinguishes Professor Bradford is his extraordinary commitment to mentoring students from underrepresented groups.”
From co-founding the Black Management Association at UC Irvine, designing the Bridge to Success course, and building the Merage School Future Leaders Initiative (FLI), Dr. Bradford has been instrumental in creating enduring institutional and system-wide structures that focus on inclusive excellence, expanding opportunities for all students, and developing the pipeline of talented business leaders and innovators. Jazmin Henry, a doctoral candidate at UCI, reflected on the “unmatched” commitment, dedication, and care of Dr. Bradford’s mentorship on her doctoral journey and countless others’, “Kevin ensured I knew I belonged—not only in the doctoral program at UCI, but in the academy—through his words and actions of encouragement and unwavering support.”
Dr. Kevin Bradford will be honored at the AMA Foundation Awards Luncheon on August 23, 2025, during the 2025 AMA Summer Academic Conference in Chicago, IL, August 22-24.