Yale SOM Poaches Two B-School Stars

After laying plans for a near 70% increase in graduate students over the next four to five years, Yale School of Management yesterday (June14) announced that it had poached two highly prominent B-schools stars from Wharton and IE Business School in Spain.

Wharton’s Anjani Jain will join Yale SOM as senior associate dean for the full-time MBA program on July 1, while IE’s David Bach will join the school as senior associate dean for executive MBA and global programs on Sept. 1.

The appointments are something of a coup for Edward A. Snyder, who took over the deanship at Yale in the fall of last year after successful stints as dean of the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and the University of Virginia’s Darden School. Rarely if ever does a business school recruit and hire leadership talent of this caliber, particularly at the sub-dean level. Both Jain and Bach have played high profile roles at their schools for years and either of them could just as easily landed a full deanship at another business school.

In an interview with Poets&Quants, Dean Snyder said that Yale began seeking additional leadership support in April after plans were made to significantly increase the enrollment of master’s level students at Yale SOM. The school’s flagship full-time MBA program will increase to 608 students over the next five years from 446. SOM’s Executive MBA, currently a specialized program for healthcare managers, will increase to a total enrollment of 166 from 31. The school expects to create another EMBA to broaden the appeal of its executive degree programs. And it is also in the process of launching a new one-year Master of Advanced Management, which will have 40 students.

All told, the planned increases will result in a 66% expansion of graduate students at SOM and slightly larger classes. Dean Snyder said that led to conversations with his Board of Advisors to beef up the leadership team. In the past, for example, the dean of the school had also been the dean of the full-time MBA program. “If we are going to actually do this, the board said let’s not mess around,” said Snyder. Let’s develop the capability to become the school we want to become. So I get to have the cavalry come. It’s clear that we are moving toward a portfolio of degree programs and the dean’s office needed more capability.”

Jain has served in multiple leadership roles at the Wharton School, including 10 years as vice dean of its full-time MBA program. Bach is currently dean of programs at IE Business School in Madrid. 
”Anjani has done everything at Wharton,” said Snyder. “David is a great program innovation machine. He’s a superstar. Without being immodest, the broader story is that people are excited about the opportunities here.”

Yale noted that the appointments come at a time of important expansion and opportunity for the school. Yale SOM recently introduced the Master of Advanced Management program and helped to organize the launch of a Global Network for Advanced Management, a collective effort by 21 international business schools to understand the challenges posed by complex global markets. With a planned move to Edward P. Evans Hall, which is slated for late 2013, the school intends to significantly scale in a bid to gain greater recognition and credibility in graduate business education.

“Without the new building, we couldn’t do the increase in the full-time MBA,” added Snyder. “So now the pieces are starting to fall into place. I see this as a careful three-year transformation process.”