Jorge Mario Silva-Risso

Jorge Silva-Risso, an Emeritus Professor of Marketing at UC Riverside, passed away on September 26, 2021, at the age of 68, after years of battling primary progressive aphasia, a neurological disease.

Jorge was born on August 3, 1953, in Montevideo, Uruguay, to Edelma Risso and Juan Antonio Silva. He graduated from the Universidad de la República in Uruguay, where he studied accounting and economics and began his career working in accounting and corporate finance while teaching at the Universidad de la República in the areas of finance, operations research, statistics, and organizational economics.

In 1989 Silva-Risso accepted an offer from the Fulbright Commission to go to UCLA as a Fulbright Scholar, earning an MBA (1991, Carter Fellow, Beta Gamma Sigma) and a Ph.D. in Management (1996). His dissertation received the prestigious Clayton Award from the Marketing Science Institute. After completing his Ph.D., he settled in California with his family and joined J.D. Power & Associates, where he started the Marketing Science group and became its Executive Director. The Marketing Science group led by Dr. Silva-Risso specialized in developing and implementing quantitative models of consumer-level response to marketing programs offered by the automobile industry. Those models were used by more than 80% of the firms in the US automobile industry to plan and optimize their pricing, promotion, and advertising programs.

Jorge Silva-Risso joined the UCR School of Business faculty in 2003 as an Assistant Professor of Marketing and stayed with UCR for fifteen years before his retirement as a tenured full Professor of Marketing in 2018. He taught courses on marketing institutions, marketing channels, and behavioral economics.

Professor Silva-Risso's research interests were econometric models of consumer response, marketing effectiveness, pricing, and the effects of the Internet on marketing. His consulting practice focused on utilizing quantitative tools and models to help automobile manufacturers increase the effectiveness and efficiency of their pricing, promotion, and advertising programs. He also worked on models to assist the product planning process. Silva-Risso's modeling work for the automobile industry was awarded the 2006 Practice Prize by the INFORMS Society for Marketing Science and was a finalist for the 2007 INFORMS Edelman award. He also won the 2007 Paul E. Green best paper award from the Journal of Marketing Research.

Professor Silva-Risso served on the advisory board of the INFORMS Society of Marketing Science from 2002 to 2007 and was the vice president of practice of INFORMS Society of Marketing Science from 2006 to 2007.

In addition to the many accolades Professor Silva-Risso earned during his distinguished career, he is best remembered by his business school colleagues as a scholar, gentleman, and a positive force within the faculty.

Jorge Silva-Risso was exceptionally curious and undaunted by diverse challenges. He was tenacious—instead of feeling defeated when things did not work out, he adapted and sought out new solutions to achieve his goals. These traits enabled him to flourish in both the academic and business worlds, and to develop synergies between the two. A fitness enthusiast, he was very proud of twice completing the Los Angeles Marathon (each time under 4 hours!), though a knee injury kept him from running his third. Afterwards, he took up cycling, boxing, and loved staying active. Jorge loved the beach, music—seeing the Rolling Stones was a personal highlight—and travel. He enjoyed attending academic conferences where he could exchange ideas, see new places, meet new colleagues, and catch up with old friends. He took great pleasure in hosting friends and family and loved showing off his asado and mojitos. Most of all, he was a devoted husband, father, and son. He met his future wife Adriana at university when they were 19; they remained partners for nearly 47 years. He cherished their marriage, and loudly celebrated their anniversaries. He delighted in his children, joyfully marking every first day of school, every graduation, and every one of their awards.

Jorge Silva-Risso is survived by his wife, Adriana, his three children, Alejandro, Fabiana, and Mario, and three grandchildren, Lena, Dom, and Nico, his siblings Adriana and Nestor, his nephews Gustavo, Esteban and Gonzalo, and his niece Victoria. He is buried in Uruguay, his home country.

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This memorial was prepared by Alexander Barinov, Assistant Professor of Finance at the UCR School of Business, using the information from the Dean’s announcement and the publicly available obituary.