1st Indian professor to become the Dean of the Harvard B-school

Indian-born business administration scholar Dr Nitin Nohria is set to become the tenth Dean of Harvard Business School (HBS). Dr Nohria who is currently the Richard P Chapman Professor of Business Administration at HBS, has also held senior administrative positions at the School, including senior associate dean for faculty development and chair of HBS' organisational behaviour unit.

Dr Nohria graduated in chemical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Mumbai and went on to receive his Ph.D. in management from Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Sloan School of Management.

Nohria is the first Indian, and indeed the first non-white, to become the dean of the 102-year old institution that typically ranks among the top three business-schools in the world.
Nohria, who will take up his new role on July 1, succeeds Jay Light, who in December announced his plans to retire at the end of the 2009-10 academic year after five years as dean.

His doctoral thesis was on behavioural and policy sciences. Dr Nohria has co-written and co-edited 16 books. He is the author of more than 50 articles and dozens of teaching cases and notes. Dr Nohria's research on core competencies required for business leaders has received wide acclaim. His books have explored a wide range of topics on how leaders from different backgrounds rose in American business to business practices that are successful in differentiating organisations.

His most recent book, Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice (2010, co-edited with Rakesh Khurana), reflects a colloquium he organised as part of the HBS centennial in 2008 to stimulate serious scholarly research on leadership.