Berkeley Names Former Haas Dean Rich Lyons Chancellor

Former Haas Dean Richard Lyons will become chancellor of Berkeley on July 1

Just days after Stanford University named its business school dean new university president. UC-Berkeley announced today (April 10) that the former dean of the Haas School of Business will become its next chancellor.

Rich Lyons, 63, who successfully served as Haas dean for ten years from 2008 to 2018, will succeed Chancellor Carol Christ, who announced last year that she’d step down from the job on July 1. Only last week, Stanford Graduate School of Business Dean Jonathan Levin was appointed president of Stanford University, a month later on Aug. 1.

The pair follow business school deans at both UCLA and Michigan who have leveraged their administrative leadership into top university jobs. Judy D. Olian, dean of UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, assumed the presidency of Quinnipiac University in 2018. Alison Davis-Blake, dean of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, became president of Bentley University in the same year, but stepped down after a short two-year stint.

FORMER HAAS DEAN WAS THE UNANIMOUS CHOICE OF THE UC BOARD OF REGENTS

Lyons was the unanimous choice as Berkeley’s chancellor by the UC Board of Regents. He will be the first UC Berkeley undergraduate alumnus since 1930 to become the campus’s top leader. He knows the place inside out, having earned his bachelor’s degree in business and finance from the university in 1982. After gaining a Ph.D. in economics from MIT, he joined Columbia Business School for six years before moving west to be on the Berkeley faculty in 1993. Other than a two-year period in 2006 as chief learning officer for Goldman Sachs, Lyons has been a Berkeley mainstay.

“No institution has come anywhere close to Berkeley in terms of shaping my life,” Lyons said in a statement. “There’s this favorite phrase of mine: ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ Neither of my parents had a four-year degree when I arrived at Berkeley. For so many reasons, in so many ways, I could have never seen the life I have lived were it not for my undergraduate years at Berkeley.”

Current Chancellor Christ welcomed the news. “I am both thrilled and reassured by this excellent choice. In so many ways, Rich embodies Berkeley’s very best attributes, and his dedication to the university’s public mission and values could not be stronger,” Christ said in a statement. “I am confident he will bring to the office visionary aspirations for Berkeley’s future that are informed by, and deeply respectful of, our past.”

HAAS DEAN CREATED AND ADVOCATED FOUR DEFINING LEADERSHIP VALUES

Born in 1961, Lyons grew up in Los Altos in the early days of the Silicon Valley start-up boom. His mother had been a flight attendant when she met and later married Lyons’ father, an American Airlines pilot who helped found the airline’s pilots’ union. Lyons has two older brothers and remembers traveling to the East Bay to attend Cal football games when he was in his early teens. Those trips sparked his lifelong love of Berkeley, according to the university.

While dean of the Haas School, Lyons oversaw the construction of Connie & Kevin Chou Hall, a state-of-the-art academic building that opened in 2017 and is celebrated for its sustainability. He also helped establish two new degree programs, linking the business school with both the College of Engineering and the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology.

Most notability, however, it was his creation of four distinct defining leadership principles that spurred a sweeping culture initiative at the school that stands out in the minds of many. Those values — question the status quo, confidence without attitude, students always, and beyond yourself — attracted more applicants to the school’s MBA program and became a creed of sorts for new students and alumni alike.

AS CHIEF INNOVATION OFFICER HE HELPED LAUNCH BERKELEY CHANGEMAKER

“My goal as a leader then, and now,” Lyons said, “is to facilitate and sustain a culture that supports diversity of perspective, provides every student with a true sense of belonging and encourages educational innovation.”

As the chief innovation officer for the university, he helped to launch the Berkeley Changemaker in 2020. With some 30 courses, the program tells the story of what Berkeley is — the story that members of the Berkeley community can tell long into the future. Berkeley Changemaker started as an idea and its courses quickly became among the most popular academic offerings on campus.

“Over 500 students showed up,” he said. “Why? Because it’s a narrative. It’s not just a name. It’s not just a curriculum. It’s not just a course. It’s a way of living, and it’s a way of living that Berkeley has occupied forever. This idea that there’s got to be a better way to do this, question the status quo.”

DON’T MISS: WHERE CULTURE REALLY MATTERS: BERKELEY’S HAAS SCHOOL OF BUSINESS 

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