Global Perspective

Northeast Ohio’s business school leadership is reflecting the growing international diversity of its students and our economy.

Three of the region’s top business school deans were born and educated in India and Southeast Asia, worked for companies around the world and settled in Northeast Ohio to share their experience with the region’s top young business minds.

Most recently, Mohan Reddy, interim dean at Case Western Reserve University’s Weatherhead School of Management, was named as its dean. Reddy was raised in India, and received his bachelor’s degree at Mysore University in Mysore, India. He worked primarily in electronics, materials and semi-conductor industries at a wide range of industrial firms in the United States, Europe and Southeast Asia.

In September, Raj Aggarwal, also a native of India, became the dean of University of Akron’s College of Business Administration. Many remember Aggarwal from his days as a professor at John Carroll University and Kent State University where he was the Firestone Chair in Corporate Finance.

Earlier last year, Luis Maria R. Calingo was appointed dean of the John Carroll University John M. and Mary Jo Boler School of Business. Born and raised in the Philippines, Calingo wrote a groundbreaking textbook on international business, “Strategic Management in the Asian Context.”

“Over the years there’s a greater amount of diversity in the individuals who are selected to lead a college of business to serve as the dean,” says Robert Scherer, dean of the Nance College of Business at Cleveland State University. “And so you’re seeing people of many ethnic and racial backgrounds, as well as more women, getting appointed to serve in those roles.

“My personal perspective is they picked the right people for the job,” Scherer says.

—ML