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Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

MSB Dean Wins Leadership Award

GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
McDonough School of Business Dean David Thomas will step down Aug. 1 after five years at Georgetown.
GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY McDonough School of Business Dean David Thomas will step down Aug. 1 after five years at Georgetown.
Dean David Thomas was honored as one of the Washington Business Journal’s Georgetown University 2014 Minority Business Leaders at an event March 20.
COURTESY GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY
Dean David Thomas was honored as one of the Washington Business Journal’s Georgetown University
2014 Minority Business Leaders at an event March 20.

The Washington Business Journal honored Dean and William R. Berkley Chair of the McDonough School of Business David Thomas as a 2014 Minority Business Leader on March 20. The Journal presents this  award to the region’s top 25 leaders for professional accomplishments, community leadership, philanthropy, awards and milestones, according to the MSB press release. Previously, Dean Thomas was a professor of business administration at Harvard Business School. He graduated with a bachelor’s in administrative sciences and a master’s and doctor of philosophy in organizational behavior from Yale University and a master’s in organizational psychology from Columbia University.

What are you most proud of accomplishing at Georgetown?
I am most proud of the fact that we’ve done a successful job mobilizing the staff and the faculty to innovate. We did a major redesign of our MBA curriculum, and we essentially redesigned it and implemented the new design in a year, which is light-speed for an academic institution. We’ve also started some initiatives that are helping us to increase the diversity at the school. We now have a partnership with PWC [PricewaterhouseCoopers] called Smart Start that’s helping us to identify students who, with mentoring, are able to excel in this environment and develop an understanding of business that they may not have come in the school with and therefore to remove some of the ways in which students are starting at different starting points because of their background

What are you most proud of accomplishing with regard to the city as a whole?
I’m most proud of the work that I did around the five-year business economic plan that I co-chaired with the Dean of the George Washington Business School as well as the Dean of Howard Business School. Already the city is starting to make headway on the plan. For example, one of the areas that we identified as having huge potential for Washington, D.C. is tourism. That led the city to focus on building a deeper relationship with China, and today it will be announced that there will be a direct flight from Washington Dulles [International Airport] to Beijing. That’s also a regional collaboration because the financial means to make that happen come from both the city and the state of Virginia. So you know what I see there is something I had a hand in creating actually having had an impact on the city. We now have an executive master’s in leadership for high-performing principals in the D.C. public school system. We took something that we distinctively do and customized it for D.C. public schools. It’s making a contribution that nobody else could make to the city. That’s us bringing in what we distinctively do to make the city become a better place.

What are your upcoming goals for the business school?
To increase the visibility of the business school in the business community here in Washington D.C., as well as globally, and to shine a light on the things I think make us distinctive. Three important things: the focus we have on being at the intersection of business and society, our focus around ethics and principled leadership and commitment to global business education and our focus on producing research that is rigorous and relevant to the most important challenges facing business and society.

What about goals for improving the greater D.C. area?
To continue to find ways we can take what we do distinctively and connect it to the needs of the city. We’re looking at ways to connect our Entrepreneurship Initiative here at Georgetown to the burgeoning entrepreneurial and startup community in Washington D.C. I’d like for Washington to become a laboratory where our students and our faculty are able to experiment with the concepts and ideas that we’re creating in this building.

How would you describe your leadership style?
I try to be very transparent so that people don’t have to wonder about what my intentions are. I think I set very high expectations and I empower people to do their work in the way that they see fit, but with shared objectives. I’m a very good listener and I probably lead more asking good question rather than sending out directives.

Who is your greatest inspiration?
My greatest inspiration is my father. My father was a guy who was not highly educated; he didn’t go to college and he was one of the smartest people I ever met. He was also one of the most respectful and he taught me I could do anything.

What motivates you to come to work every day?
I come to work at a place with some of the most talented young people in the world. Every day I come to work with the possibility that I’m doing something that’s going to shape somebody whose truly going to transform the world. I don’t know who they are but I know that potential is in this building every day.

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