Lester Center’s Charron to Lead MBA Curriculum Changes

Interim Lester Center Executive Director David Charron, MBA 95, has been named executive director of the Berkeley Innovative Leader Development (BILD) initiative and will oversee its launch this fall.

Charron will work closely with Dean Rich Lyons; Jay Stowsky, senior assistant dean for instruction; the faculty; and program directors to implement the school's ambitious new approach to MBA education in both the Full-time Berkeley MBA and Evening & Weekend MBA programs.

"We are very fortunate to have a candidate who has experienced the Berkeley MBA program firsthand — as a student and as a teacher," says Lyons. "Dave’s insights and experience in leading the Lester Center will be invaluable in implementing this critical cornerstone of our school’s new strategy."

Charron, who joined Haas in 2003, currently serves as interim executive director for the Lester Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He teaches Case Studies in Entrepreneurship, Workshop for Startups, and Entrepreneurship.

Charron also serves as the executive director of the Berkeley Entrepreneurship Laboratory, a nonprofit incubator with the goal of increasing entrepreneurial activity at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Charron has held positions in technology licensing and commercialization with Xerox PARC, MIT, and Stanford University. In 1995, he co-founded Scientific Learning Corp., a publicly traded neuroscience company based on innovations from UC San Francisco and Rutgers.

He has also worked with Technology Ventures Corp., a nonprofit organization, fostering the commercialization of technologies emerging from the national lab system through direct assistance to entrepreneurs and startups. He has been a principal member of the faculty team for the Intel curriculum project, teaching how to teach entrepreneurship to faculty members at peer institutions in Budapest, Madrid, Sofia, Mumbai, Dublin, Cairo, Istanbul, Moscow, and Beijing.

Charron holds a BS degree in mechanical engineering from Stanford University and an MBA from the Haas School.

Read more about the school's BILD initiative
Visit David Charron's faculty bio page