Kellogg Dean Sally Blount’s Brave New Strategy

Blount says she met Ziegler while the consultant was doing her informational interviews to make a transition to the not-for-profit world. Initially, Ziegler worked at Kellogg for two or three days a week as a consultant until Blount hire her full-time. “Her team is in charge of everything outside the classroom,” says Blount. “She is an operations genius. It was fabulous working with her as a consultant. It is even more fabulous bringing her on the team. She had some really competitive offers that made me sweat a little at the end but thankfully she really did decide she was ready to go to the not-for-profit sector and really wanted to be part of helping Kellogg reset its trajectory. Folks like that make it really fun to come to work.”

THE VOLATILE MARKET IS MAKING SOME STUDENTS NERVOUS

The interview with Blount was conducted just after S&P downgraded the debt rating for the U.S. government and caused major volatility in the stock market. Asked how students were dealing with it, Blount said the turmoil has naturally made some students jittery. “There is a natural state of worry for anybody who imagines they will go into the job market,” she says. “We don’t know how it will play out. If it’s a double-dip recession, you and I know what that does to hiring. But entry-level employees are always better off than existing employees. People still need to bring in new talent and those hires tend to be at the lower end of the income scale. But we’ll see.”

DON’T MISS: THE FIRST 100 DAYS OF A NEW KELLOGG DEAN or A CONVERSATION WITH LEGENDARY KELLOGG DEAN DONALD JACOBS