Lifetime Achievement Award For Leadership: UC Davis’ H. Rao Unnava

When H. Rao Unnava steps down as dean of the Graduate School of Management (UC Davis) in June 2026, he will leave behind one of the most consequential legacies in business education. During his decade of leadership, Unnava has transformed UC Davis from a quietly ambitious regional school into a nationally distinctive player — a school that punches far above its weight in innovation, inclusion, and impact. For that record, Poets&Quants is proud to present him with our Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership in business education.

This is not the first time Unnava has been honored by Poets&Quants. In 2024, he was named Dean of the Year for his thoughtful, people-first approach to leadership. But since then, his impact has only deepened, as he guided UC Davis through volatile global markets, demographic headwinds, and the dizzying pace of technological change. In the past year, he launched a new undergraduate major that has immediately become more selective in admissions than an invite to Harvard or Yale, and he is working on a new promising approach to executive education.

All this is on top of a portfolio of innovative changes, including the launch of the first online MBA and part-time Master of Management programs in the University of California system, offering credit-bearing stackable credentials that could be applied toward a degree program, deferring tuition for online MBA candidates, creating a lifelong learning platform for the GSM community, and opening all MBA content to alumni for free. He also pulled off the near impossible, getting a new undergraduate business major approved by the university.

Unnava, a marketing scholar by training, brought to Sacramento a rich career rooted in academia and leadership. He spent nearly 30 years at Fisher College of Business at The Ohio State University before being appointed dean of the UC Davis’ Graduate School of Management  in June 2016.

‘I FOUND MORE JOY IN WHAT I DO’

Asked how his nearly ten years as dean changed him, he offers a self-effacing response: “After coming to UC Davis I found more joy in what I do. People are laid back and have fun. They push things forward. At UC Davis, they are still steeped in academic values. It humbles you quite a bit to be surrounded by the people here. My personal growth has been in understanding people a lot more and seeing things from their perspective. I have tried to design things that help both the institution and the people working here — not at the expense of people.”

Indeed, his leadership has been described as a calm, thoughtful presence driving change in a system that is often rigid and process-driven.

Unnava arrived in the U.S. from India in 1984 with his young wife, Vasu, who he had met in engineering school in Hyderabad. When they came for PhDs at Ohio State University, the pair had to be tutored on American culture and rituals from Halloween and Thanksgiving to Christmas, holidays they had never celebrated. Four years later, armed with his PhD, he chose to stay at Ohio State. He threw himself into his discipline of marketing, moving up the ranks from assistant professor to a full professorship with tenure. After turning down a chance to become a senior associate dean in 2012, a time when he stretched his entrepreneurial muscles by forming Angie’s List, he later reconsidered to take the job two years later.

Responsible for all academic programs offered by Fisher, Unnava soon found himself on search lists for deanships. Leaving Ohio State, where he had spent the past 32 years, could not have been easy. But he and his wife packed up and moved west to begin his extraordinary deanship. The school was then running a deficit with a faculty of just 25 professors. The student body was largely limited to a full-time MBA program with annual intakes of about 45 students, a pair of part-time MBA programs in Sacramento and San Ramon, with a total enrollment of some 270 students, and a master’s of professional accountancy, with an annual intake of fewer than 35 students. Truth be told, the school had just been through a round of staff cutbacks. Forever in the shadow of its higher-ranked UC cousins, Berkeley Haas and UCLA Anderson,  Davis was often under-appreciated and overlooked. 

The most recent accomplishment of his deanship is the launch of the undergraduate business major. In its first cycle, it drew an astonishing 9,000 applications — and that was with no marketing . “That was huge and really no advertising,” says Unnava. “There was nothing we did other than to announce we had an undergraduate business major.”

HIS UNDERGRADUATE DEGREE IS ALREADY THE MOST SELECTIVE AT UC DAVIS

Students entering the university’s portal now see the “business economics cluster” which lays out the options going forward. From year one, the major quickly became the most selective at UC Davis — and one of the most selective in the country.

Despite the deluge of interest, the major is intentionally small: once at full scale it will admit up to 300 students per year (including transfers). Unnava explains: “We will have 175 [incoming freshmen] and in the third year we accept transfers. So we will be a small undergraduate major. In third and fourth year, we will be at 300 students coming in.”

Even with international visa challenges, the program recorded a low melt-rate among admitted students. “We admitted about 170 people and lost a few people because of the international visa situation… We started with 155 students. It was a shock to see the melt happen. The melt rate that we have is the lowest, even with international students, than what others have.”
At a time when many higher education institutions fear the so-called “demographic cliff,” Unnava is cautiously optimistic. He expects only a small decline in apps due to the reputation of the UC system, while state colleges and community colleges in California will likely bear the brunt of the challenge.

UNNAVA PREDICTS ‘ROUGH WATERS FOR A FEW YEARS’

In common with other deans, he has faced as turbulent a market for graduate management education as anyone. Visa constraints, rising costs, and a flood of online programs have reshaped the landscape. Unnava doesn’t sugarcoat the challenge. “It is rough waters for a few years. But the speed with which things are happening — it’s one day something and the other day something else.”

He revealed the hard numbers: “We lost 45 international students. It is a $2.5 million to $3 million hit on the budget. We expected that and planned for that.”

That loss, incurred in the full-time MBA and the MS in Business Analytics programs, is symptomatic of a broader structural challenge: international students’ uncertainty about post-study work opportunities. “There is a shyness that creeps in,” he notes. “Why would I spend $250,000 on an MBA and not have a job opportunity. If we do not eliminate the OPT (Optical Practical Training) , three years is adequate for people to pay off their loans and three years of work experience in the U.S. would make them highly desirable in other countries.”

NO RETREAT. JUST REINVENTION

On the H1B front, where President Trump has not imposed a $100,000 tax for each visa, Unnava is pragmatic. “What we saw before — people came in for an MBA and got a job and became senior execs in companies — is a problem because of the H1B fee. You have to really bet on someone for a visa. So it will become more selective. There was a time in the early 80s: people would have a year of OPT. H1B was easy to get because people got their visas and green cards in many cases in three weeks. The whole system was abused. I can see that people would be upset about that. I think the solution may not be what we are doing right now.”

In short: Unnava embraced the turbulence not by retreating, but by adapting with discipline, creativity, and a clear-eyed focus on institutional resilience.

Unnava’s response to market disruption has never been retreat — it’s been reinvention. As he puts it, “The day you print your syllabus, it is outdated. We’re having alumni come on Zoom and present the AI project they’re working on… how AI is being used in accounting, in auditing processes. Alumni will teach alumni.”

POETS&QUANTS 2025 HONORS

DEAN OF THE YEAR: RICE BUSINESS’ PETER RODRIGUEZ

BUSINESS SCHOOL OF THE YEAR: ESCP BUSINESS SCHOOL

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR LEADERSHIP IN BUSINESS EDUCATION: UC DAVIS’ H. RAO UNNAVA

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD FOR MBA ADMISSIONS: DUKE FUQUA’S SHARI HUBERT

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT AWARD IN BUSINESS SCHOOL BRANDING: ILLINOIS GIES’ JAN SLATER

MBA PROFESSOR OF THE YEAR: MICHIGAN ROSS’ ANDY HOFFMAN

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