Gupta Leaves Johns Hopkins for CEO Post
Posted by: Louis Lavelle on May 16, 2011
Less than four years after he arrived to create a new b-school from scratch, Yash Gupta is stepping down as dean of the Carey Business School at Johns Hopkins University. Gupta is leaving at the end of the academic year on June 30 to become the chief executive officer of SDP Telecom Inc., a privately held Montreal-based telecommunications company.
Executive Vice Dean Phillip Phan will take over as interim dean on July 1, while the university undertakes a national search for a replacement.
Gupta’s decision was announced today by Johns Hopkins President Ronald Daniels in an email message to university faculty and staff. Daniels described Gupta as a “tireless evangelist” for the Carey School, citing accomplishments that included recruiting the faculty and administrative staff, launching a new global MBA program, and establishing a new home for the b-school in Baltimore’s Harbor East business district.
“With these impressive achievements to boast of, the Carey School is now poised to enter the next phase of its history, one of focused growth and development,” Daniels wrote.
In a brief statement on the company’s web site, SDP cited his “extensive experience managing large complex and startup organizations” as one reason he was chosen for the CEO’s position.
Despite all the accolades, it’s hard to say if Gupta was an unqualified success in his position at Carey—he simply hasn’t stuck around long enough. (This is something of a habit with Gupta. He left his last position as dean, at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business, after about two years.) The hard part about being a dean isn’t the beginning, it’s the middle—the struggle for accreditation, the climb up the rankings, the nonstop fund-raising, and the building of a world-class faculty. For all we know, Gupta would have excelled at all those things. But the fact is, we’ll never know.
