Diversifying both executive suites and student experiences are among Eli Broad College of Business achievements of this year and goals for the coming years, Dean Sanjay Gupta told faculty and staff at an end-of-semester meeting Friday, Dec. 7.
Dean Sanjay Gupta
At the meeting, Gupta touted the recent success of some Broad Spartan women in executive advancement and affirmed a commitment to vastly increase the volume and scope of education abroad participants and programs from the Broad College.
Those efforts are aimed at helping the Broad College meet its strategic goals emphasizing a digital economy, a global mindset, ethical leadership, and diversity and inclusion among all Broad Spartans.
The goal of inclusion “is a big deal,” Gupta said. “When you think about what’s going on in the world of financial services, in talking with the leaders of these companies, they tell you that the number one issue that they are dealing with is trying to improve the gender balance in that industry. The same thing is being talked about in [the] technology [industry].”
“Something we can take heart in is, this notion of how many Broad Spartan women are in leadership roles,” Gupta said, including:
- Priya Balasubramaniam (MBA Supply Chain Management ’01), vice president of operations at Apple Inc.;
- Danielle Brown (BA Business ’99), vice president of employee engagement and chief diversity and inclusion officer at Google;
- Natalya Leahy (MBA, Finance and Supply Chain Management ’06), chief financial officer of Holland America Line;
- and Carey Martin, (BA Human Resource Management ’98; Master in Labor Relations and Human Resources ’99), who will take over as chief human resources officer in 2019 for Whirlpool, Inc., among others.
In November, the college hosted its bi-annual Advancing Women in Business event, where professionals had an arena where they could network, encourage, and learn from each other.
Gupta and Antoinette Tessmer, a professor of practice in the Department of Finance, also detailed a plan to increase education abroad participation rates from around 20 percent now to 50 percent within the college in the coming years, with a long-term goal of 100 percent participation. There will also be an emphasis on programs in non-traditional regions including Latin America and Southeast Asia.
To spur growth in education abroad programs, the Broad College will increase recruitment of faculty to create and manage individual programs. And to increase demand, the college will focus on increasing the pool of scholarship money available for such programs.
“We will make this an important part” of fund-raising, Gupta said. “This will become one of our important initiatives that we will focus attention on and see if we can not raise some significant support for it.”
