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Graduate Management Admission Council Announces New Board Members

Six business school and industry leaders join from India, South Africa, Spain, and the U.S.

RESTON, Va., July 13, 2022 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), a global association of leading graduate business schools, today announced the addition of six new members to its board of directors: (elected by member schools) Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, Dean and Professor of Finance, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University; W. Bruce DelMonico, Assistant Dean for Admissions, Yale School of Management, Yale University; Catherine Duggan, Director (Dean), Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town; Anthony Wilbon, Dean, School of Business, Howard University; (appointed by the Board to fill vacancies) Mukesh Butani, Founder and Managing Partner, BMR Legal Advocates; and Itziar de Ros, Director of Corporate Marketing & Communications, IESE Business School, University of Navarra. They started their terms on July 1.

“We are thrilled and grateful for the six outstanding individuals from four continents joining the board of GMAC, bringing with them diverse and inspiring perspectives on graduate management education,” said Sangeet Chowfla, president and CEO of GMAC. “As the industry continues to evolve and adapt in the face of the ever-changing landscape, their onboarding signals GMAC’s strong commitment to its global mission of connecting business schools and candidates in support of growing graduate business education.”

New GMAC Board Members

Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou, Dean and Professor of Finance, Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University

Dr. Isabelle Bajeux-Besnainou is the 10th Dean of the Tepper School of Business and the Richard P. Simmons Professor of Finance. Since her arrival in 2020, Bajeux reorganized the leadership structure and started new degree programs that offer Tepper students new options and enhanced flexibility. As well, she launched the first comprehensive Tepper School DE&I Strategic Plan to support diversity, equity, and inclusion. The Tepper School is known for being the birthplace of management science, as well as for its frequent cross-collaboration with the other renowned schools at Carnegie Mellon. In that spirit, Bajeux refreshed its brand positioning to be the school of “The Intelligent Future,” where students learn to combine the power of data with human judgement and imagination to make better decisions. Before her tenure at Tepper, Bajeux was Dean of McGill University’s Desautels Faculty of Management in Montreal, Quebec where she spearheaded the school of retail management and several new master’s degree programs.

Mukesh Butani, Founder and Managing Partner, BMR Legal Advocates

Mukesh Butani is the Founder and Managing Partner of BMR Legal Advocates, a Tier 1 law firm. He was also Co-founder and Chairman of BMR Advisors, one of India’s leading professional services firms in the areas of Tax, Risk, and M&A. With specialization in corporate international tax and transfer pricing, he has experience in advising multinational corporations and Indian conglomerates on a range of matters concerning business re-organization, cross-border structuring, and tax controversy. Mukesh served as Vice-Chair of the ICC Paris Tax Commission and as a member of the Permanent Scientific Committee of the International Fiscal Association and OECD BIAC. A Fellow Chartered Accountant, he holds a double bachelor’s in accounting, as well as Financial Management and Law. He serves as an Independent Board Member in select leading multinationals and Indian conglomerates and is a visiting faculty at the University of Vienna and the University of Lausanne.

Itziar de Ros, Director of Corporate Marketing and Communications, IESE Business School, University of Navarra

Itziar de Ros is the Director of Corporate Marketing and Communications at IESE Business School in Barcelona. In this role, de Ros is responsible for IESE’s marketing and communications strategy across all its campuses. She joined IESE in 2007 after working in marketing at DuPont, based in Geneva, Switzerland. In 2011, de Ros was made Director of MBA Admissions at IESE, a post she held for six years, managing a team of 20 people from 12 different countries. Since 2021, de Ros has been on the Board of Raventós Codorniu, one of the most prestigious wine and sparkling wine companies in Europe. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Navozyme, a blockchain-based solutions company based in Singapore. She holds an MBA from IESE, as well as a master’s degree in Digital Transformation and a BA in Business Administration from the University of Navarra.

W. Bruce DelMonico, Assistant Dean for Admissions, Yale School of Management, Yale University

Bruce DelMonico is Assistant Dean for Admissions at the Yale School of Management. He joined Yale SOM in 2004 and has led the Admissions Office since 2006. During his time at Yale, Bruce has helped innovate new technologies and novel methods of candidate evaluation, including early roles in the Slate CRM system, the use of asynchronous video questions, and the adoption of forced-choice non-cognitive assessments. He has sat on a number of industry-related boards and is a past Trustee of the Hopkins School in New Haven, Connecticut. Before joining Yale, Bruce was an attorney focused on First Amendment, white collar, and commercial litigation, working primarily on cases with exposure ranging from $10 million to $10 billion. Bruce holds a bachelor’s degree in Honors English from Brown University, a master’s degree in Literature from the University of Texas at Austin, and a law degree from the University of Virginia School of Law.

Catherine Duggan, Director (Dean), Graduate School of Business, University of Cape Town

Catherine Duggan is Director (Dean) of the University of Cape Town Graduate School of Business (UCT GSB). Her research examines the political economy of development in Africa, where she has done work in two dozen countries over more than twenty years. Prior to joining the UCT GSB, she was Vice Dean at the African Leadership University School of Business – a new business school in Rwanda – and a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. She served on the Harvard Business School faculty for nearly a decade and won several teaching awards, becoming the first woman in the school’s history to win the Faculty Award for Outstanding Teaching in the Required Curriculum two years in a row. She earned a Ph.D. from Stanford University and a B.A. with honors from Brown University, both in Political Science.

Anthony Wilbon, Dean, School of Business, Howard University

Dr. Anthony Wilbon is the Dean of the Howard University School of Business. Dr. Wilbon’s particular areas of research include technology strategy, technology innovation and entrepreneurship, operations management, project management, systems development life cycle, and research methodology. Prior to joining Howard University, Dr. Wilbon was a faculty member at Morgan State University’s Earl Graves School of Business and Management. He also previously served in engineering and management level positions and several organizations including the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Booz-Allen and Hamilton, Inc., American Management Systems, Inc, and Westinghouse Electric Corporation. A respected academician, Dr. Wilbon completed his BS in Electrical Engineering at Michigan State University, an MBA at Howard University School of Business, and a Ph.D. at George Washington University in Management of Science, Technology and Innovation. He is also the recipient of a Fulbright International Education Administrators Award (France).

Besides the aforementioned, newly elected board members, Sanjiv Kapur, an independent consultant, was re-appointed for a second term. GMAC also recognizes and thanks its outgoing board members: William (Bill) Boulding, Dean and J.B. Fuqua Professor of Business Administration, Fuqua School of Business of Duke University; Tom Buiocchi, Executive Advisor & Former CEO of Service Channel; Erika James, Dean of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania; Peter Johnson, Assistant Dean, Full-time MBA Programs & Admissions, University of California, Berkeley’s Haas School of Business; Soojin Kwon, Managing Director, Full-Time MBA Admissions and Student Experience, University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business; and Donna Rapaccioli, Dean of the Gabelli School of Business and Dean of Business Faculty, Fordham University.

About GMAC

The Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) is a mission-driven association of leading graduate business schools worldwide. Founded in 1953, GMAC provides world-class research, industry conferences, recruiting tools, and assessments for the graduate management education industry, as well as resources, events, and services that help guide candidates through their higher education journey. Owned and administered by GMAC, the Graduate Management Admission Test™ (GMAT™) exam is the most widely used graduate business school assessment.

More than 12 million prospective students a year trust GMAC’s websites, including mba.com, to learn about MBA and business master’s programs, connect with schools around the world, prepare and register for exams and get advice on successfully applying to MBA and business master’s programs. BusinessBecause and The MBA Tour are subsidiaries of GMAC, a global organization with offices in China, India, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

To learn more about our work, please visit www.gmac.com

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