“If students know this is a place where they’re free to be who they are, they’ll be able to question everything, harness the power of creativity, and know we have our support,” Boyd said. The new dean of the VCU Business School.
In the year The 145,000-square-foot, four-story building, which opened in 2008, is an incredible place to educate the next generation of creative business leaders, Boyd said. “I love our building, and I want to include learning labs for industry-led projects, with corporate plug-ins so students can work where they’ve studied and apply the knowledge they’ve acquired in the courses immediately.
“It’s not just our job to educate our students, it’s to prepare them to face the many challenges of a technologically advancing global business market. We can meet them where they are, provide opportunities to develop them into leaders who have the potential to change the world. Getting them out of Snead Hall into industry and truly making sure they don’t miss a beat.” It’s our mission. To prepare them properly for what’s next, to infuse insightful leadership into our mission and curriculum, and to create a truly caring culture. We must create a curriculum that empowers our students to lead the lives they want.
‘These are my people.’
Boyd herself felt right at home when she visited the university for the first time.
She wasn’t looking for change. In fact, she loved her work as associate dean for innovation, service and engagement at West Virginia University, and as chair, professor and Fred T. Tatsall Chair of Finance in the John Chambers College of Business and Economics Department.
But forces — from headhunters to her husband — push her to check out VCU.
“These are my people,” Boyd realized when she came here.
“I immediately saw all these amazing opportunities to really make an impact and make an impact,” she said. “And that’s why I came to VCU. Ability to work on R1 urban campus [R1 denotes a doctoral university with very high research activity] Surrounded by industry in the heart of Virginia’s capital city with an incredible reputation for medicine and the arts, it made me realize that the possibilities here are endless.
“Our student population is so rich and diverse that we have something very unique to draw from. At VCU, we have what organizations are looking for in terms of a diverse mindset capable of leading corporate social responsibility, sustainability and innovation.”
Boyd officially started July 1, but VCU has been meeting with leaders on campus, in the community and at the school since she was hired eight months ago. Where traditional business schools can be too rigid, Boyd said, VCU has the opportunity to change that model. “If we embrace our culture, our people and our potential, there’s no end to where we can go as a school and VCU as an institution. The new university brand truly says, ‘We’re different, that’s why we’re here.’
A short jump from dance to finance
Boyd grew up in Dallas, where she attended a junior high school in the arts, majoring in music. Eventually, her passion for dance took over. She attended high school in the Dallas Art Society at Booker T. Washington High School specializes in the performing and visual arts.
Boyd entertains first-generation students because she is the first in her immediate family to attend college as a traditional student. It was her first time trying to figure out how to pay for dorm life, student loans, and tuition.
“I went to the University of Texas. [at Austin] Because I was very practical,” she said. “It was the cheapest option in the state, so from a financial standpoint, it was feasible.”
Boyd received a BFA in dance from UT Austin, training at Dallas Black, Ballet Dallas and finally Ballet Austin. When life took her young family to Lubbock, Texas, she decided to hang up her pointe shoes and go to business school, just like her father had. Early retirement is primarily driven by back injuries, which are common among dancers and gymnasts. She used her analytical skills to pursue an MBA in finance from Texas Tech University and eventually a Ph.D., finding new ways to be innovative. in Finance from George Washington University.
While people wonder how she made the jump from dance to finance, Boyd isn’t too surprised.
“Why wouldn’t I?” she asked. “From an intellectual perspective, being a dance major, I wrote critical analyzes of various aspects of dance, art, and theater almost every day, so coming into an analytically oriented discipline, looking for trends and changes in terms of the marketplace…building that narrative came naturally in many ways.
After spending eight years in the Office of the Chief Economist at the US Commodity Futures Trading Commission, Boyd became involved in understanding the innovations taking place in the business and capital markets. Her research focuses on investment and market microstructure, and she strongly believes that her work at the commission during a period of dramatic change in financial markets helped her see how technology could shift the entire business landscape into new, unknown domains.
“Coming to VCU, which has a top art school, and leading a business school is like coming full circle for me,” Boyd said. “I am delighted to have the opportunity to combine business with the strong, rich cultural aspects of the university. This is where truly great things happen. It’s a place where we don’t just talk about innovation, but create and bring that innovation to industry.
Ask everything
“My biggest focus is breaking,” Boyd said. “My responsibility to our faculty, staff, and students is to question everything: to disrupt the way you work, learn, and teach to make sure we’re not always the way we’ve done things. Questioning things leads to innovation. And innovation allows us to emerge as leaders.”
Boyd said she fully believes in VCU’s mission. To do that in a meaningful way, she hopes to develop industry-sponsored programs, harness the power of the school’s diversity, and capture the strengths of a prominent R1 institution to break down silos and create cross-disciplinary degrees.
And most importantly, she said, it supports the school’s faculty, staff and students to change in ways that impact the world around them.
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