People and Places: October 2026
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 On 1 January, Markus Venzin will step down as the CEO of EHL Group in Switzerland to become the institution’s vice president of the international advisory board. Venzin has served as CEO since 2022, and during that time, he led the school to attain AACSB accreditation and BCorp certification, helped to strengthen EHL’s international reputation, and oversaw the creation of the School of Practical Arts. Venzin will continue to lead all operational activities through the end of the calendar year. Achim Schmitt (pictured left), a member of the executive leadership team and dean of EHL Hospitality Business School, will succeed Venzin as CEO. In that role, Schmitt will continue to place EHL’s educational mandate at the center of the institution’s activities, with a focus on practical arts and human-centered leadership. |
 Utah State University (USU) has named Valentina Salotti as the next dean of the Jon M. Huntsman School of Business. Salotti comes to USU from Iowa State University, where she began her academic career and currently serves as the senior associate dean for academic affairs at the Ivy College of Business. She also previously served as an associate dean for undergraduate programs. Salotti begins her new position on 1 January, replacing Frank Caliendo, who has served as interim dean since July and will continue in that capacity through the end of the calendar year. Salotti will be the second dean of the Huntsman School since its naming nearly 20 years ago. She takes on the role upon the departure of Douglas D. Anderson, who recently retired, a transition previously featured in our February 2026 People and Places article. |
 Rajib Sanyal has been announced as the interim dean of the College of Business at Illinois State University for a six-month term beginning 1 January. Sanyal brings more than two decades of business school leadership experience to the role, including service as dean at Adelphi University in New York, Ball State University in Indiana, and Northern Michigan University. More recently, he completed two interim dean appointments, including at the University of Washington Bothell’s School of Business from 2023 to 2025. Sanyal will succeed Ajay Samant, who is returning to the faculty. Illinois State will begin a national search this fall for the college’s next permanent dean. |
 The University of Pennsylvania has appointed Erika James as dean of the Wharton School for a second five-year term, concluding 30 June 2032. During her first term as dean, James led renewed momentum in philanthropy and alumni engagement, oversaw the expansion of executive education programs—including the Bruce I. Jacobs Master of Science in Quantitative Finance (featured in our October 2025 People and Places article), and championed investments in faculty excellence and research. James was first appointed dean in 2020. |
 Joseph A. DiAngelo Jr. has announced he will step down as dean of the Haub School of Business at Saint Joseph’s University (SJU) in Philadelphia. At the completion of the academic year, DiAngelo will be named dean emeritus of the Haub School, and in 2028 he will return to the classroom as a professor of management. He will also continue to work with the office of advancement and alumni relations to build relationships with alumni, donors, and corporate partners, and to drive philanthropic support for the business school. Under DiAngelo’s deanship, the school saw a significant increase in student enrollments—from 1,300 to more than 2,600 undergraduate students and from 600 to 1,200 graduate students, introduced 12 new undergraduate majors, and established seven new graduate programs. He also placed specific importance on quality and reputation. During his more than 30 years of involvement with AACSB, DiAngelo served on AACSB’s board of directors from 2002 to 2006 and was elected as chair for the 2012–13 fiscal year. Last year, DiAngelo received AACSB’s inaugural Global Impact Award in Excellence in Service: Accreditation Volunteer, which recognized individuals for excellence in and dedication to improving the quality of business schools through their contributions to the AACSB accreditation community. |
New ProgramsMaster’s Union University in India has launched its Four Nations Global Business Program, a nine-month program focused on giving participants exposure to distinct international business ecosystems. Students will spend their first 12 weeks of study in Gurugram, the next eight weeks at Imperial Business School’s campus in London, and the final 10 weeks at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, along with an optional one-week immersion in Dubai. The curriculum will cover finance and fintech, product and AI, sales and go-to-market, and operations and leadership, with opportunities to engage with companies and business leaders across the four markets. The optional Dubai immersion will offer another perspective on how businesses are built, financed, and scaled. As part of the program’s practical learning component, students will undertake projects including a 75-day direct-to-consumer brand sprint, where they will take a product from discovery to launch across platforms including Shopify, Amazon, and Flipkart. The program will also include a leadership lab in London and capstone projects in each ecosystem. IÉSEG School of Management in France is launching an AI-powered content marketplace. Last month, the school debuted “IÉSEG Tomorrow,” an initiative that will expand its learning offerings through hybrid, modular, flexible, and customizable formats. The newly developed initiative was designed to support both businesses and individuals in acquiring new expertise, updating their skills, and developing new competencies in response to their specific training needs. The lifelong learning offering will be structured around five complementary formats, ranging from bite-sized learning modules (one to three hours) and microlearning units (four to eight hours) to traditional format courses (nine to 14 hours), microcredentials (two to four days), and certificates (five to 12 days), covering key areas such as artificial intelligence, corporate social responsibility, leadership, and entrepreneurship. Starting in 2027, IÉSEG will launch an AI-powered content marketplace that will provide highly personalized recommendations and deliver the content in the expanded academic portfolio. IÉSEG plans to invest 1.5 million euros (nearly 1.7 million USD) in developing the marketplace, which is anticipated to host more than 500 pieces of content across 20 areas of expertise. The School of Business Administration and the School of Health Sciences at Oakland University in Michigan have designed a concurrent MBA/Master of Science in Safety Management (MSSM) degree program. The curriculum combines advanced safety management coursework with business disciplines to prepare students for management and executive responsibilities. Safety management topics include safety administration and analysis, research, risk management, and loss control, while business coursework includes areas such as accounting, human resources, and legal aspects of business. The MBA/MSSM program takes three years to complete and is designed for environmental health and safety (EHS) professionals seeking the business skills needed to advance into higher-level roles, as well as students who have completed a bachelor’s degree in EHS and are pursuing graduate education. Earlier this month, North Carolina State University (NC State) announced that the Poole College of Management is broadening access to its Graduate Business Leadership Certificate. The academic offering, a 12-credit-hour graduate certificate designed to cultivate practical, evidence-based leadership skills, has historically been available only to Jenkins MBA students. Through this expansion, graduate students from any discipline, as well as prospective learners from outside NC State, may now pursue the certificate to strengthen their leadership acumen. The certificate is available fully online with in-person study abroad and global offerings and offers flexible scheduling. Applicants can begin the program in January each year. Grants and DonationsIndiana University (IU) has received a 100 million USD gift from Kelley School of Business alumnus Jeffery H. Thomasson and his wife, Benita. This gift represents the largest contribution from an individual in the university’s history and, combined with previous gifts, brings the Thomassons’ total support of IU to more than 111 million USD. In honor of their philanthropy, the Indiana University Board of Trustees has approved naming the Kelley School’s graduate division the Jeffrey H. Thomasson Graduate School of Business. The endowed division encompasses 19 graduate programs across IU Kelley’s Bloomington and Indianapolis campuses. The money will provide support for endowed faculty positions to help to attract top talent to the school and create the Thomasson Scholars Program, which builds on the existing Thomasson Fellows Program that provides financial assistance to undergraduate Kelley students. In addition, the Thomassons gave 5 million USD to the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at IU Indianapolis. That gift will provide additional support for the all-encompassing Thomasson Scholarship, which provides opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students to pursue an IU education regardless of financial circumstance while preparing them for careers in philanthropy, nonprofit leadership, and community impact. The Psaros Center for Financial Markets and Policy at Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business in Washington, D.C., has received a 14 million USD gift from the Psaros family. This most recent commitment brings the family’s total support to 25 million USD, which includes their 11 million USD gift to endow the center in 2022 (previously featured in our April 2022 People and Places article). The Psaros family’s support also extends beyond the Psaros Center, totaling more than 32 million USD for leadership, faith-driven, and civic-minded initiatives across the university, such as the Michael G. and Robin Psaros Endowed Chair in Business Administration at McDonough. Fordham University in New York has announced a 9.2 million USD gift from university trustee Rose DiMartino and her spouse, Karen Sue Smith, that will provide financial support and fund opportunities across the university—for both students and faculty. A portion of the funding will help expand entrepreneurship education programs at the Gabelli School of Business, including one initiative where Gabelli School students consult with local entrepreneurs and students in Bronx high schools and in Africa. The funds will also expand Fordham’s Serving the City program, providing students with more paid internships at nonprofits and cultural organizations in New York City. On 1 October, Western University Ontario announced two new gifts that extend an 80-year partnership between Ivey Business School and the donor family. Siblings Richard and Rosamond Ivey’s latest gifts, combined with the school’s contribution through its Dean’s Chair Match program of 5 million USD, represent a total investment of 13 million USD to advance faculty excellence, research, teaching, and thought leadership. Rosamond’s most recent investment will establish a Chair in Leader Character within the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership. The new chair will play a central role in the Institute’s vision to become a global incubator for leader character research and education. A large portion of her gift—2.5 million USD—will be directed toward the chair, and the remaining 500,000 USD will go to the Western Fund, a fund that allows the university to respond to urgent needs and emerging opportunities. Richard’s latest gift of 5 million USD will establish the Richard W. Ivey Family Chair for AI in Business, along with a Research and Outreach Fund, teaching scholar, postdoctoral fellows, and AI Enhanced Learning Innovation Fund. Together, they will aim to advance Ivey’s ambitions to “create knowledge that matters on one of the most critical issues facing business and society today” while also contributing to experiential learning. Centers and FacilitiesEarlier this month, the University of Colorado Denver (CU Denver) received a letter of intent to establish a second campus in Hyderabad, India, marking the first time a foreign university has received authorization for a degree-granting location in the State of Telangana. The new campus will draw on the strengths of CU Denver’s flagship location to offer pathways into high-demand fields, including analytics, business, computing, and engineering, while encouraging interdisciplinary thinking and problem-solving. To support a successful launch and sustainable growth in India, CU Denver is partnering with global education company Emeritus, which will manage key non-academic functions. The university anticipates welcoming its first cohort of students in August 2027. The Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, launched the Institute for the Future of Business, a university-led effort that takes a broad approach to focused collaboration on the business ramifications of disruptive technologies. AI’s impact was the initial catalyst for the institute, but its focus and mission extend beyond any single technology. The institute will convene corporate leaders, researchers, educators, and students to explore the immediate and long-term implications of groundbreaking technologies and to promote smart, effective, human-centered use. The institute will create opportunities for collaboration and applied research that turn ideas into action. Students will further benefit by participating in industry-based projects, while businesses will gain access to thought leadership and a deep talent pool. 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