Toronto Rotman Dean Susan Christoffersen To Step Down After 1 Term

Susan Christoffersen, a longtime finance professor and dean of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management since 2021, will not seek a second five-year term and will instead become an adviser on innovation investments to the university’s president. File photo

Canada’s premier business school is going to need a new dean.

The University of Toronto has announced that Rotman School of Management Dean Susan Christoffersen will step down when her term ends on June 30, 2026. Christoffersen has been appointed the university’s new Presidential Advisor on Innovation Investments, a role that begins January 1 and will run concurrently with the remainder of her deanship before she transitions out next summer.

“I am deeply appreciative for the opportunity and privilege to have served both as Vice-Dean and Dean over the past decade at the Rotman School,” Christoffersen tells Poets&Quants. “I am enormously proud of all that we have managed to accomplish together—from program renewal, to the growing impact of our thought leadership, to our many community-building efforts in coming out of COVID. I am confident that our research distinction and our renewed program portfolio position us well to rise as global leaders in management education.”

A DEANSHIP DEFINED BY GROWTH & NEW PROGRAMS

In the new post as adviser to U of T President Melanie Woodin, Christoffersen will lead efforts to expand U of T’s innovation ecosystem, including developing venture-capital investment opportunities and building structures to support student-managed investment funds. The university said the portfolio is meant to strengthen experiential learning, diversify revenue, and enhance U of T’s position as a national hub for economic growth.

Christoffersen, a finance scholar who holds the William A. Downe BMO Chair, has led Rotman since July 2021. The university credited her with advancing global research partnerships, deepening industry ties, expanding executive education, and delivering “bold innovations” in Rotman’s academic portfolio. She will remain dean through June while the university prepares to launch a search for her successor.

Her tenure has included some of the school’s most significant programmatic moves in years. Among them, most recently, are the launch of two new one-year business degrees: an 11-month Master of Management for non-business graduates and a one-year MBA designed for candidates with business backgrounds. Both programs are set to welcome their first cohorts in May 2026, just before Christoffersen steps down.

A SHIFT TO A BROADER INNOVATION MANDATE

Christoffersen’s incoming university-wide role underscores a growing emphasis at U of T on integrating innovation, investment, and hands-on learning across disciplines. As she prepares for the transition, the university said, details on the leadership search at Rotman will be shared in the coming months. Christoffersen began her five-year term on July 1, 2021 after a search by the school that lasted a year.

Christoffersen’s research focuses on investment funds and the role of financial institutions in capital markets. She joined Rotman in 2010 after more than a decade as a faculty member at Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. At Rotman prior to becoming dean, she was co-academic director of Rotman’s TD Management Data and Analytics Lab.

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