Indian makes it to the top at elite U.S. B-School
By agencies   |   Monday, 24 October 2005, 19:30 IST
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NEW YORK: A recent BusinessWeek article said Indian American Srikant M Datar, accounting professor at HBS since 1996 and senior associate dean of executive education is the next dean of Harvard Business School Moreover, the 15-member faculty advisory group for the dean search of the world’s best known B-school has another Indian American faculty member Das Narayandas on it, a paper reported. Nothing to be surprised really, considering that Indians have arrived big time at top B-schools in the U.S.. “There has always been a large representation of Indian professors in the highest ranks of top B-Schools, including full professors and chaired professors. Now we are seeing many Indians in leadership positions, such as dean, the Economic Times said. Several schools in the Top-40 are led by people of Indian origin,” says Sankaran Venkataraman (Venkat), who’s himself a globally known scholar in the field of entrepreneurship and the MasterCard Professor of Business Administration at the Darden Graduate School of Business Administration, University of Virginia. “In addition to the dean’s position, there are numerous people of Indian origin who are associate deans or chairs of departments. Many Indian professors also hold leadership positions in professional academic bodies such as the American Finance Association, American Marketing Association, or the Academy of Management. Finally, the editors of some of the leading journals are Indians,” he adds. A member of the strategy, entrepreneurship and ethics area at Darden who teaches MBA and executive level courses in strategy and entrepreneurship, Venkataraman feels that for the Indian American community breaking into politics will take longer than the success achieved in business. “Indians in general are highly respected in the U.S. In addition to success in business, they have also achieved success in medicine, technology and scholarship. Politics requires us to break into a different kind of network than the one we entered into namely, business and education. I expect to see more Indian representation in politics as the numbers of 2nd and 3rd generation Indians swells. The children of the immigrants are more likely to be better integrated into the political network than the immigrants themselves. There have been a few breakthroughs in recent times as people of Indian origin have successfully stood for elected office in several states. This shows that they are developing the grass-roots support, financial base and election campaign organization,” he feels, the paper said.

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