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As a college student, it certainly wasn’t in Todd Milbourn’s life plan to become dean of a business school.

In fact, he didn’t envision a career in academics at all. As a math and economics major in college, Milbourn saw limited job prospects in a faltering economy. On the advice of his favorite economics professor, he opted to head to Indiana University to pursue his Ph.D. That’s where he started exploring corporate finance and C-suite compensation, research areas he would become known for over the next three decades as he built a career at the London Business School; the University of Chicago; and, for the last 25 years, the Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis.

At the latter institution, Milbourn achieved tenure and became deeply ingrained in the dean’s office, heading up the school’s faculty and research efforts for a decade. That meant his name frequently surfaced with higher education search firms. Those firms soon started recruiting him for openings as the dean at business schools across the country.

“When they first came to me, I was like, ‘Oh, that sounds terrible,’” Milbourn says, laughing. “I’m just going to go back and be a faculty member focusing on the research and teaching I love.” He ended up kicking the tires, taking interviews for a couple of years, but never quite finding the right fit. 

Then this past year, while Milbourn was on a research sabbatical, the job for dean of the Cox School of Business opened at ��ɬֱ��. It was the only one Milbourn applied for that year. “This school at this University in this city was the only one on the planet that had every single element I was looking for,” he says.

We sat down with Milbourn to learn more about the 10th dean of the Cox School and his plans for the next steps in the school’s journey. 

What attracted you to this role at the Cox School of Business?

Todd Milbourn: I had a checklist. First, it had to be a really good school with great faculty and programs and true aspirations of moving up. I wasn’t interested in a caretaker role or a full turnaround role. Second litmus test: Was there meaningful upside? I mean, everybody wants to be a little bit better-looking, a little more athletic, in a little better shape. Did they actually have the ability to do that?

��ɬֱ�� Cox had that in spades. There was clearly meaningful upside. A huge part of that was the fact that it is based in an economic region that is growing exponentially. As a business school, it’s already an environment where things are happening and only greater things are yet to happen.

I had a couple of personal preferences that I was also looking for. I was interested in a school that had D1 sports. I had been at two Division 3 places—the University of Chicago and Wash U—and I really wanted to be part of one where we had a little bit more excitement for the football and basketball games. So the recent move to the ACC was incredibly exciting. ��ɬֱ�� is now being bantered about with the Dukes, the Virginias, the Stanfords, the Cal Berkeleys, which all have fantastic business schools. I truly believe that being a member of the ACC is an academic accelerant to everything ��ɬֱ�� and the Cox School are doing. 

Given the position we’re in, the incredible moment in time with the Dallas economy, the high-level vision is that the Cox School should be at the center of anything and everything that touches the economic engine and entrepreneurial ecosystem of Dallas and beyond. That’s the shining vision on the hill.

How are we going to get there? Well, we’re going to invest in intellectual research. We want to make sure we are thought leaders; that’s a clear strategic priority that’s going to emerge. Another is to lean heavily into entrepreneurship and infuse entrepreneurial thinking into everything we do.

Are there any quantifiable metrics or KPIs for the Cox School that you’re measuring? Do you pay attention to rankings?

TM: From the standpoint of thought leadership and intellectual capital, a very straightforward KPI for us is: Do we raise our per-person research productivity over time? Per capita, are we putting out more thought leadership both in scholarly journals and on the practitioner side? I’m definitely going to deem success or failure on whether we raise that.

On the topic of entrepreneurship, I think success—if you look five years out—is that we’re seeing more viable startups emerging out of the Cox School and the broader ��ɬֱ�� ecosystem. We’ve given students the tools, and we’ve done the coordination across, say, engineering or humanities & sciences such that we’re seeing a lot more viable companies coming out.