Nitin Nohria (Harvard B-School), Dipak Jain (Kellogg, INSEAD)... The world's top B-schools increasingly seem to prefer Indian- origin heads. Now, add another name - Soumitra Dutta, new dean of Cornell University's management school.
The 48-year old IIT-Delhi alumnus will be the first Indian-origin dean at the Samuel Curtis Johnson Graduate School of Management when he takes over on July 1. A professor of business and technology and founder and faculty director of a new-media and technology innovation lab at INSEAD's French campus, Soumitra Dutta was one of two finalists at the end of a long search process that began in August last year. He will be the first dean at a top American business school from outside the US. "Professor Dutta's appointment is a natural fit with Johnson's increasingly global outlook," said David Skorton, president of Cornell University.
As part of Dutta's offer, Cornell will hire his wife, Spaniard Lourdes Casanova, as a senior lecturer of management in the Johnson school. The couple have a daughter, who studies at Oxford University. A call to the man of the hour can be a tricky business; the queue to get to him is long; but significantly, it has dawned on him that he's high denomination. Dutta, though, surprises us when he picks up the cellphone during lunch hour, and says: "Of course we can talk. I have more time for you than what you are asking for." Quickly then, very typical of a new media man, who has linked technology to management, he adds, "Hold on. Let me put on my hand's free."
