The world’s first collegiate business school, the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has named Erika H. James as the new dean effective on July 1, according to an announcement made by Penn President Amy Gutmann and Provost Wendell Pritchett.
James will become the first woman and person of color to have the position in the history of the business school.
“Erika is an award-winning scholar and teacher and a strong, proven leader who serves as dean of the Goizueta Business School at Emory University,” said Gutmann. “A passionate and visible champion of the power of business and business education to positively transform communities locally, nationally, and globally, she is exceptionally well prepared to lead Wharton into the next exciting chapter of its storied history.”
Wharton’s current dean, Geoff Garrett, will be leaving the school after a six-year tenure to become dean at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
James previously served as dean at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in 2014. Within her first term, she was able to increase the faculty by 25 percent, launch an innovation and entrepreneurship lab for students, and founded a corporate think-tank specializing in research.
“Erika has consistently and constructively drawn upon her own scholarship in the areas of leadership development, organizational behavior, gender and racial diversity, and crisis leadership,” Pritchett said, “applying her own insights into human behavior to foster a work culture that allows people to thrive personally and professionally. She has led faculty and student workshops on such topics as unconscious bias and building trust across divides and has been engaged as a consultant by some of the nation’s largest and most prestigious firms.”
Before becoming dean, she served as the senior associate dean for executive education at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. James is also a member of the Graduate Management Admissions Council and board member of SurveyMonkey.
Her accolades include the Earl Hill Jr. Faculty Achievement and Diversity Award from The Consortium, being named the Top 10 Women of Power in Education by Black Enterprise and the Power 100 by Ebony Magazine.
James holds a Ph.D. and master’s degree in organizational psychology from the University of Michigan and a bachelor’s degree in psychology from Pomona College of the Claremont Colleges, in California.
Wharton School has 235 renowned professors and 5,000 students that consist of undergrads, MBAs, executive MBAs and doctoral students.
