Cambridge Taps A Wharton Prof For Its New Dean

Wharton Professor Mauro Guillén has been named dean of Cambridge University’s Judge Business School

Cambridge University today (March 9) found a new dean for its Judge Business School in the U.S., reaching into the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School for a professor of international management. Mauro Guillén, who served as director of the university’s Lauder Institute of Management & International Studies for a dozen years until 2019, will assume his new role as director at Judge on Sept. 1.

The Spanish born professor, who first came to the U.S. to earn his PhD at Yale University, more recently rose to greater prominence with the publication of a collection of bold predictions, 2030: How Today’s Biggest Trends Will Collide and Reshape the Future of Everything. The book ultimately landed on The Wall Street Journal‘s bestseller list and was named by the Financial Times one of the 2020 books of the year. In it, Guillén argues that by 2030 there will be more robots than human workers, India and China will become the biggest drivers of the global economy, the middle-class in Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa will outnumber the U.S. and Europe combined, and more global wealth will be owned by women than men.

An eclectic intellectual, Guillén will be the fourth consecutive leader of Judge recruited from outside the school. He will succeed Christoph Loch, who joined Judge from INSEAD, as was Loch’s predecessor, Arnold De Meyer, who had been the founding dean of INSEAD’s Singapore campus. De Meyer took over from Dame Sandra Dawson, a professor of organizational behavior who was recruited from Imperial College in London. Stephen Watson, who originally headed a management studies group in Cambridge’s department of engineering, was the inaugural director of Judge from 1990 to 1994.

Judge’s one-year MBA program was recently ranked 16th best in the world by the Financial Times, up from 26th best when Loch became director in 2011. During Loch’s decade as director,  Judge strengthened its degree and executive education offerings and boosted its research quality with a strategy that put more focus on innovation and impact than quantity. Loch launched new ’masters’ degrees in social innovation, entrepreneurship and accounting, and helped to create and fund new research centers in alternative finance, strategic philanthropy, gender diversity leadership and the circular economy.The business school also doubled in revenues and maintained a strong financial position.

CAMBRIDGE HAS HIRED A GLOBALLY-MINDED PROFESSOR AND FUTURIST

It was also under Loch’s leadership that Cambridge opened the new 5,000-square-metre Simon Sainsbury Centre opened to students and executive education participants in 2018, greatly expanding the school’s lecture, meeting and dining facilities while uniting Cambridge Judge activities under one roof.

In bringing Guillén aboard as Loch’s successor, Cambridge has hired a globally-minded professor with a futurist bent, a successful fundraiser, and curriculum innovator. Joining the Wharton School in 1996, he has taught both MBA and undergraduate business students as well as executives in Wharton’s flagship Advanced Management Program and many other courses for executives.

Guillén graduated in 1987 from the University of Oviedo in his native Spain with a BA degree in political economy and business management. Sponsored by the Bank of Spain and the ulbright Program, he came to the U.S. to pursue a PhD at Yale in sociology while also completing his doctorate in political economy from the University of Oviedo. He graduated from Yale in 1992 and assumed his first faculty appointment at MIT’s Sloan School of Management. Four years later in 1996, he moved to Wharton following his wife, Sandra Suárez, who joined the faculty at Temple University in Philadelphia where she now serves as a senior associate dean for faculty affairs. She also earned her PhD at Yale in political science.

LED LAUDER’S FIRST-EVER FUNDRAISING CAMPAIGN AND LAUNCHED A NEW CURRICULUM

At Wharton, Guillén led the Lauder Institute’s first-ever fundraising campaign and launched  a new curriculum emphasizing hands-on learning experiences.  According to Cambridge’s announcement, he has furthered the sociological study of the global system, and advanced comparative research on institutions, artistic movements, organizations, business groups, multinational firms, and digital platforms. His scholarship has received numerous distinctions, including Fulbright and Guggenheim fellowships, the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Award, the President’s Book Award of the Social Science History Association, and a membership in the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

“Professor Mauro Guillén is ideally placed to build on the great work carried out by Professor Christoph Loch and his predecessors. Mauro is a distinguished academic of the highest calibre. His commitment to academic excellence, diversity, and innovation in teaching will ensure Cambridge Judge Business School continues to excel in its next phase of development and growth”, says Cambridge Vice-Chancellor Stephen J. Toope in a statement. “I am delighted that Mauro will be joining us and very much look forward to working with him”.