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Getting InBoston University School of Management Gets a New Dean

Boston University’s School of Management (BU Full-Time MBA profile) is the latest b-school to turn to the corporate world for a leader. The school announced today that Kenneth W. Freeman, former chief executive officer at Quest Diagnostics, will replace Louis E. Lataif as dean on August 1.

Freeman, a Harvard MBA himself, is currently a managing director at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co (KKR), a company specializing in large and complex buyouts. “His business experience, his intellect and values are the perfect tools to lead our faculty in shaping the future of management education and continuing the positive trajectory of the School,” BU President Robert Brown said in a press release.

In the release, Freeman says he wants to give business students both “core quantitative and analytical skills” as well as “a very strong value system.” He also has some specific priorities he would like to focus on as dean. “Procuring additional resources will be an important focus, further assuring that the (School of Management) community has the talent, technology and ethical standards for it to be consistently recognized as among the best business schools in the world,” Freeman said in the release.

Freeman joins a small group of business school deans to come from outside of academia. Wake Forest University School of Business Dean Steve Reinemund led PepsiCo before heading to Winston-Salem in 2008, and J. Frank Brown spent 26 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers before becoming dean of INSEAD in 2006.

-Zachary Tracer