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Dean Wendy York<\/b><\/p>\n
Paving the Way for\u00a0the Next 100 Years<\/b><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> By\u00a0Nancy Spitler<\/b> Dean Wendy York brings a collaborative leadership style\u00a0to the helm of the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> Dean Wendy York has been at Clemson for two years \u2014 two extremely busy, intense years \u2014 getting to know faculty, staff and administrators,\u00a0 <\/span>embracing the Clemson culture, learning, and listening. Designing the vision for where the College of Business needs to go and a roadmap to get there. Creating a culture of collaboration and innovation and trust. She tends to talk more about \u201cwe\u201d than \u201cI.\u201d \u00a0\u201cThe opportunity this building \u2014 and this gift \u2014 represent,\u201d says York, \u201cis to really make a statement: We\u2019re not just about football. Our academics have national credibility.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div> \u201cThe Signature Programs are the skill areas that are particularly potent for students in the 21st century. That\u2019s where that vision comes from. It\u2019s driven by common business sense,\u201d York says. Named and Endowed Chairs and Professorships<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Mary Anne Raymond \u00a0<\/strong>Lyudmila Chernykh John C. Alexander Jr. Thomas W. Hazlett Doug Irwin Paul Wilson William J. Kettinger Chad Navis Aleda Roth Zeki Simsek Dean Wendy York brings a collaborative leadership style to the helm of the Wilbur O. and Ann Powers College of Business.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":23025,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[479,671,937,1187,2241,3264],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-23032","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","tag-business","tag-clemson-college-of-business","tag-dean-wendy-york","tag-fall-2020-features","tag-philanthropy","tag-wilbur-o-and-ann-powers"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2020\/10\/COB_Dean-York.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23032","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23032"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23032\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23025"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23032"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23032"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23032"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/clemson.world\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=23032"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nYork came to Clemson from the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, where she reorganized multiple units to bring them into strategic alliance. That experience, along with more than 20 years in for-profit and nonprofit organizations, starting and selling her own company, and five years as a venture capitalist, prepared her well for taking the helm at the College of Business.
\n\u201cWhat we\u2019ve done in the last two years as a team is set a vision for where the college needs to go,\u201d she says, \u201cto make sure our students are business ready for what the marketplace needs \u2014 and to ensure the culture of the College of Business is a collaborative and high-functioning team.\u201d
\nThe transformative $60 million gift from Billy and Ann Powers will help bring that vision to reality. \u201cThe opportunity this building \u2014 and this gift \u2014 represent,\u201d says York, \u201cis to really make a statement: We\u2019re not just about football. Our academics have national credibility.\u201d
\nThe Powerses\u2019 gift is definitely the largest of a number of gifts that have graced the college in the past two years. Before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, York traveled about 50 percent of the time, fundraising and getting the vision out \u2014 and working toward raising national attention on the larger University.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s been very gratifying,\u201d York says. \u201cThe gifts we have received allow me to invest in the people and programs we need to develop. It gives us the opportunity to reward faculty teaching and researching in those new areas which are so business relevant.\u201d
\nYork and her team are leveraging the strengths of the college to eight Signature Programs: leadership, sales innovation, business analytics, value chain and advanced manufacturing, entrepreneurship, brand marketing and graphics, economics and finance, and the MBA program.<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\nFirst and foremost, she says, is leadership, and it\u2019s clear this is an area about which she is passionate. \u201cLeadership is a choice, not a title,\u201d York says. \u201cWhatever major our students graduate with, those are important skill sets that will help them get their first job. But regardless of major, the one thing they need to carry with them is a sense of leadership, that is, the sense of obligation to make a positive difference and the confidence to try.\u201d
\nShe pauses. \u201cThere\u2019s a way to do that respectfully within a hierarchy. But you don\u2019t have to have the title to be a leader, just the courage and heart to make a difference where you are.\u201d
\nYork\u2019s own leadership style is one that insists on collaboration and trust. Those two things, she believes, lead to innovation. \u201cWhen you have an environment in which there\u2019s a sense that the rules are fair and everyone has equal access,\u201d she says, \u201cyou create more trust, and when you create more trust, you enable people to cooperate and be more innovative.\u201d
\nMost people, she believes, \u201cjust want to be in an environment that gives them the chance to work and succeed. They find out that if everybody works together, the whole boat will rise.\u201d It\u2019s an approach she took at Stanford and the reason she felt comfortable leaving: \u201cI built a very strong team that knew how to work collaboratively.\u201d
\nShe\u2019s seeing the dividends of that approach at Clemson: \u201cWe have department chairs and faculty and staff gathered around a new vision. They are finding ways they can support that, and they are reaping the rewards of the generous alumni support of those programs.\u201d
\nLeaving Stanford wasn\u2019t in York\u2019s immediate plans. But the opportunity at Clemson was intriguing and inviting, and it keyed into something very basic to her personality: the chance to make a difference. \u201cI was convinced by the provost that I could run my college and by the president that I could make a difference for this whole University by leading this one particular college \u2014 the College of Business is on the ascent.\u201d
\nThe gift from Billy and Ann Powers is transformative for the college and speeds that ascent. \u201cThis gift will ensure that long after the building is opened and I\u2019m no longer dean, there\u2019ll be a legacy of investment that will continue to make that curriculum cutting edge,\u201d says York. \u201cThe gift and the building are really paving the way for the next 100 years of the University.
\n\u201cI\u00a0 <\/span>am honored to\u00a0 <\/span>get us kicked off with a vision based on servant leadership and the courage to be constantly innovating. I feel blessed to be at this place right now.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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\n<\/strong>Thomas F. Chapman \u201965 Distinguished Professorship in Leadership<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Wells Fargo Professorship of Banking<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Thomas C. and Anne Townsend Breazeale Endowed Professorship in Investments<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Hugh Macaulay Endowed Chair in Economics<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Harris Family Professorship in Economics<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Wilson Newman Professorship<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>William S. Lee Distinguished Professorship in Management<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Arthur M. Spiro Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Burlington Industries Professor of Supply Chain Management<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>Professor, Gressette Chair of Business Strategy and Planning<\/p>\n<\/div><\/section><\/div>
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