Kellogg’s Dean Sally Blount to Step Down
Northwestern University Provost Jonathan Holloway has announced that Kellogg School of Management’s Dean Sally Blount—the first woman to lead a global business school—will step down at the end of the 2017-18 academic year after solidifying Kellogg’s place among the world’s premier business schools.
In addition to finishing the school’s $350 million capital campaign in August with a record-setting $365 million dollars, a crowning achievement earlier this year was the opening of the 415,000-square-foot lakefront building on Northwestern’s Evanston campus known as the Kellogg Global Hub, for which Blount led the fundraising, oversaw the design and guided the move-in.
Dean Blount posted a video message to the Kellogg community explaining her decision to step down, calling it, “an ideal moment for a new leader to be selected, and to take the reins.”
“I’m so excited about Kellogg’s next chapter, but I’m also aware that this moment offers a rare opportunity in my own life,” Blunt says, noting that next summer will mark 30 years since she came to Kellogg as a young graduate student.
“This inflection point creates an opportunity for me the to start thinking bravely about my own life in the ways that I have about the institutions I’ve led. I’ve long dreamed of taking a sabbatical year, to travel and to write, and I want to spend some time thinking about my own final chapters in education as the pace of transformation accelerates in our marketplace.”
Provost Holloway expressed his deep appreciation for Blount’s collaborative approach and dynamic stewardship of Kellogg, and said he is excited to have her leading the school for one more year. Holloway will oversee an international search to select Blount’s successor during the coming academic year.
“It is truly one of my life’s greatest honors that when President Shapiro and former Provost Linzer selected me to be Kellogg dean, I became the first woman to lead a top global business school,” Blount concludes in the video, adding,”I am grateful to the thousands of you who have partnered with me to make Kellogg soar again.”
