Léon Laulusa Takes Over As CEIBS Dean, With AI & China-Europe Ties On His Agenda

Leon Laulusa, new dean and vice president of China Europe International Business School: “Excellence here is not an accident; it comes from a united community”

Léon Laulusa has begun a five-year term as vice president and dean of China Europe International Business School, moving from the leadership of ESCP Business School to a role at the center of CEIBS’s China-Europe mission.

Laulusa officially took office on August 17, and CEIBS held his installation ceremony on August 27. His appointment brings the school a dean with senior leadership experience in European business education, professional ties to China dating back nearly three decades, and a stated interest in how artificial intelligence is reshaping management education.

For Laulusa, the move also marks a return to Shanghai. He first visited the city in 1997 as a doctoral student and later helped develop the relationship between ESCP and CEIBS, including their jointly run Global Master in Management dual-degree program. He has also served on the advisory board of Shanghai Jiao Tong University’s Antai College of Economics and Management.

FROM DELOITTE TO THE DEAN’S OFFICE

Laulusa’s began his career at Deloitte, where he worked on the firm’s China desk while teaching part-time at HEC Paris. He joined ESCP as a professor of financial reporting and audit in 1999 and gradually moved into academic and administrative leadership.

Before becoming executive president and dean of ESCP in 2023, he held a series of senior positions at the school, including responsibility for academic affairs and international relations, the Paris and Warsaw campuses, and ESCP’s Dubai operation.

His tenure as dean also led to a period of significant growth and ambition at ESCP. In 2025, Poets&Quants named the school its Business School of the Year, citing its distinctive multi-campus model and broader efforts to rethink management education around technology, sustainability and entrepreneurship.

A FOOT IN BOTH WORLDS

Laulusa’s departure from ESCP earlier this year closed a more than quarter-century relationship with the school. P&Q reported in May that Laulusa would step down as dean during the summer to take up a new professional opportunity. That next opportunity is now CEIBS.

CEIBS – which operates campuses in Shanghai, Beijing, Shenzhen, Zurich and Accra, Ghana – has a global alumni community of more than 35,000 people across more than 90 countries, and its international programs increasingly emphasize movement between China and other major business centers. It is not simply an Asian business school with international ambitions – its China-Europe identity is embedded in its name, history, faculty, programs and partnerships. Laulusa arrives with a direct understanding of that model: During his time at ESCP, he was one of the European B-school leaders most closely associated with China, and his academic career has given him more than two decades of experience working with students and executives from different cultural and institutional environments.

That combination could prove useful at a moment when the relationship between Chinese and Western business communities is becoming more complicated. B-schools have long benefited from globalization – students moving freely between countries, companies recruiting internationally, and partnerships crossing borders with relative ease – but geopolitics, technology, and shifting trade relationships are now forcing schools to reconsider what internationalization should mean. For CEIBS – which describes its proposition as “China Depth, Global Breadth,” an approach that seeks to give students a deeper understanding of China while preparing them to operate internationally – that question is particularly acute, and Laulusa’s background seems to fit naturally into the equation.

‘A MARVELOUS GROWTH IN SOCIETY’

Laulusa marked his appointment in late August with a LinkedIn post reflecting on his own history with Shanghai. “In July 1997, I arrived in Shanghai for the first time as a Ph.D. student,” he wrote. “My notebook was filled with questions about how deep-rooted Confucian values like harmony, respect, continuous learning, and balance shape modern management practices.” Watching the city change over the nearly three decades since, he says what struck him most wasn’t the skyline: “More than concrete and sky-high towers, I saw a marvelous growth in society: a vibrant human energy driven by incredible people striving every day for a better life, deeper connections, and a stronger future.”

In the same post, he broke the school’s name down letter by letter as a statement of purpose:

• Creativity – “sparking original ideas that challenge the status quo”
• Excellence – “striving for the highest academic and executive standards in everything we do”
• Innovation – “turning visionary ideas into impactful business practices”
• Bridge-Builder – “tying China and Europe, and connecting both with the wider world”
• Society – “serving a higher mission to empower people, improve lives, and build a sustainable global community”

An ambitious mission like that, he wrote, “is always a collective endeavor, built by community, shared vision, and deep human collaboration.”

‘I AM NO LONGER LOOKING ALONE’

Another major part of Laulusa’s agenda at CEIBS will be artificial intelligence. The school’s “AI + HI” strategy has identified AI and internationalization as priorities for its next phase; Laulusa has already spent much of his time as a European dean thinking about what technology means for management education.

Laulusa’s move is somewhat unusual in the world of business education – he is not simply moving from one leading school to another, but from one side of a longstanding institutional relationship to the other, when the idea of a “bridge” between China and Europe is becoming more complicated and arguably more important. (See ESCP’s New Strategic Plan: A “Third Way” Between The U.S. & China In Business Education.)

Laulusa himself invoked the bridge metaphor in remarks on the occasion of his appointment: “A bridge is not a neutral object; a bridge is a choice,” he says. “It must be built, maintained, defended and walked across in both directions.” He closed on a personal note, recalling the young doctoral student who arrived in Shanghai nearly three decades ago: “He is still looking today, but the greatest gift of my life is that I’m no longer looking alone. I am looking with you all.”

DON’T MISS ESCP DEAN LEON LAULUSA TO STEP DOWN THIS SUMMER and THE P&Q INTERVIEW: ESCP’S DEAN ON THE FRENCH B-SCHOOL’S UNIQUE VALUE PROPOSITION

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