Former UC Davis Dean Rao Unnava And Wife Missing In Himalayan Floods

H. Rao Unnava, the marketing scholar who spent a decade transforming UC Davis’ Graduate School of Management and twice earned recognition from Poets&Quants, is among the dozens of Americans unaccounted for after catastrophic flash floods tore through the Nepal-China border region last week.

Unnava, 66, and his wife, Vasundhara “Vasu” Unnava, who lectures in marketing at UC Davis, had set out on what their daughter called a “trip of a lifetime” — a pilgrimage to Mount Kailash in Tibet followed by two months with family in India to mark his June retirement. Their daughter, Vaasavi Unnava, told the Associated Press that the couple planned to cross from Nepal into Tibet the same day the floods hit.

The disaster, triggered by a glacial lake outburst on August 26, has killed hundreds and left nearly 2,000 people missing across Nepal and China’s Tibet region, including scores of foreign trekkers. The U.S. State Department has said dozens of Americans are unaccounted for.

A DEAN OF THE YEAR AND A LIFETIME HONOREE

Unnava’s disappearance strikes close to home for anyone who has followed graduate management education over the past decade. P&Q named him our 2024 Dean of the Year, crediting his “thoughtful, people-first approach” to a deanship that pulled the school out of budget deficits and into the ranks of the UC system’s most innovative business schools. This past November, P&Q went further, giving Unnava our inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award for Leadership as he prepared to step down.

Over 10 years, Unnava built the first online MBA and part-time Master of Management programs in the UC system, launched credit-bearing stackable credentials, opened MBA content to alumni for free, and – against long odds – shepherded a new undergraduate business major through the university’s approval process. That major drew 8,800 applications for just 175 seats in its first cycle, more than 50 applicants per seat – a selectivity rate P&Q noted outshone both Harvard and Yale.

He had announced in July 2025 that he would step down as dean on June 30, 2026, planning a sabbatical before returning to the GSM faculty in 2027 to teach marketing and advertising.

A ‘DISCIPLINED & DUTY-BOUND’ FIGURE

Vaasavi Unnava, a 31-year-old Ph.D. student, told the AP that when she first learned of the flooding she assumed her parents had already crossed safely into Tibet with their tour group. She wrote to him via WhatsApp to check in, but the message was never delivered.

She describes her father as “disciplined and duty-bound” but also quick with a joke, and her mother as spontaneous, playful and, in her words, the smartest woman she’s ever met. Of her parents, she says simply: “They have just changed so many people’s lives for the better.”

UC Davis officials have not yet issued a statement on Unnava’s status. P&Q will update this story when there is more news. 

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