139 Years - Meet Erika James, the First Woman to be Appointed Dean of The Wharton School of Business
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By Karen Kaufman, director, Global Accounts at INNOV8 Meetings, and chair, MPI Potomac Chapter Professional Development Committee
Article is in collaboration with MPI Potomac Chapter, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
Article is in collaboration with MPI Potomac Chapter, Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee.
In its 139-year history, The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, arguably the best business institution in the country, has never had a woman or a person of color as the dean. Well in July of 2020, that all changed.
“The ability to continue to do this work on behalf of students and faculty and spread the important role that business plays at an institution that has so much global reach was very attractive and as the environment changes, there will be new opportunities to experiment in business education, and I look forward to being able to work with the faculty, staff, and students there on what that might look like,” Erika H. James said.
Erika, at two years old, immigrated from Bermuda where her parents were music teachers; she must have received the academia bug from them. She earned her Bachelor of Psychology from Pomona College in 1991 and her Ph.D. in organizational psychology from University of Michigan in 1995. Since graduation she has been a senior associate dean for Executive Education at the Darden School of Business at University of Virginia and dean of the Emory University Goizueta Business School, where she was also the first woman of color to lead.
In her six years of leadership at Goizueta, she was able to improve student career success and tout one of the most gender-diverse faculties with a growth factor of nearly 25%, and nearly all women. She was able to implement an initiative to build an innovation and entrepreneurship lab, which led workshops on topics like unconscious bias.
As an expert on workplace diversity, she believes that organizations need to start looking in new directions to identify and acquire exceptional talent. It is up to the leaders in these organizations to stop using traditional avenues to find strong, intelligent and capable new executives and try new directions to find them. She also makes the point as a crisis leadership guru that CEOs and executive directors should not rely on writing memos to the public or their employees about diversity policy changes they need to show in leadership and practices that efforts are being made right now to bring about these changes.
Though being a “first” comes with a lot of pressure, Erika says, she hopes she’s not the last woman or African-American to step into her role. “My hope is that we start to normalize this experience, and one day we won’t have to start stories with ‘What does it feel like to be the first’ because people just become so accustomed to it.”
As one of the Ebony Power 100, she continues to impress through her thoughtful and graceful approach to academia. She is definitely someone to follow and watch in the future.
To learn more about Erika James, visit whr.tn/AboutErikaJames.
The MPI Potomac Chapter Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DE&I) Committee is committed to bringing you relevant topics, our podcast series and our DE&I System and Roadmap.
To learn more about our DEI Initiative, please visit us at www.mpi.org/chapters/potomac/media-resources/diversity-inclusion or contact our co-chairs: Sheryl Brannon, CMP, MBA, sbrannon@spi-meetings.com, or Anjali Sanghvi, anjalisanghvi@gmail.com.
