Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/233379
ust as business executives sometimes leave the corporate world to take up posts as deans, occasionally longtime deans depart academia to lead other organizations. That's exactly what Carolyn Woo did when she became president and CEO of Catholic Relief Services in 2012 after serving nearly 15 years as dean of the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana. While she was dean, she spent one year as chair of the board of AACSB International; she also led the association's Peace Through Commerce initiative. In her new role, she has been listed as one of the 500 most powerful people on the planet by Foreign Policy magazine—one of only 33 noted as being "a force for good." Here, she discusses how her experiences at Mendoza prepared her to lead CRS and how business school can prepare students for success in the nonprofit world. J You went from being a dean to leading a massive humanitarian organization. How are the jobs similar? To be a dean, you need to have a strategic vision, and you have to 38 January/February 2014 BizEd bring people along on that vision. You also must be able to move people to higher levels of standards and performance. And you have to use systems, assignments, and structures to align the implementation with the vision. I did those things as dean, and I do them now. The fundraising piece of the job is also the same. Fundraising is more than just cultivating donors. It's getting people excited about what you do and giving them a sense of ownership. It's articulating your mission and your achievements in a way that's inspiring. What is most different? The biggest difference is the number of stakeholders I deal with. In a business school, the major stakeholders are faculty, students, donors, corporate recruiters, and other deans. In my current job, my staff is the equivalent of my faculty—but I have staff in more than 90 countries around the world. My donors include governments and large corporations, as well as individuals. And, because I represent the Catholic Church in the U.S., some of my other stakeholders include the bishops, the priests, and the people Many business school graduates will go on to work in the nonprofit sector. Do you think that current business school curricula adequately prepare these students for their careers? I think what we teach in business schools is directly relevant to the not-for-profit world. In terms of skills and expertise, there's about a 90 percent overlap in what students need to know, although a lot more soft skills are required in not-for-profits. What's different are two things. In nonprofits, managers must be able to motivate employees even though they can't offer the highest pay. At the startup level, the pay differential between not-for-profits and for-profits isn't very large, but as individuals move up the hierarchy and gain more responsibility, the differential is huge. I would say that a senior manager who handles a major nonprofit program might earn about a third of what a comparable industry leader would make. That leads to the second thing. Leaders of nonprofits have to be the kinds of people who will get a high degree of intrinsic satisfaction DAVE CUTLE R THE VIEW FROM THE OTHER SIDE in the pews of U.S. churches. In addition, I work with faith leaders from around the world. CRS is involved in advocacy to political leaders on topics like poverty reduction and humanitarian aid, so I also reach out to American government leaders. This gives you an idea of how my stakeholders have broadened. Another difference is in the degree of complexity in my deliverables. As a dean, my deliverables were degrees and the educational experiences that led to degrees. At CRS, my deliverables are designing integrated solutions around issues such as hunger and food security, education and literacy, water, sanitation, and agricultural livelihoods.