On the Fast Track
By Pamela Babcock
Thomas S. Robertson, Wharton’s 13th Dean, moves at the
speed of business.
At a university whose founder famously said, “Time is money,” Thomas S. Robertson doesn’t waste a second.
Wharton’s new Dean is driven by three impulses: Move, do, and move on.
Robertson follows his frequent brisk runs not with a cold drink, but with a hot jolt of caffeine from a cappuccino. On the golf course, he plays like every hole is downhill, zooming over the fairways until he runs up on a foursome who regard golf as a leisurely game. When he tours a museum, he views and absorbs so quickly his companions are left two or three rooms behind.
“I have a high need for variety seeking,” said Robertson, who became Wharton’s 13th Dean on August 1. “I get bored easily. I like to make decisions, and I like to move quickly.”
Robertson is starting a second career at Penn. He ended
his first 23-year career as a professor and administrator at Wharton when he left in 1994 to serve as a professor and later deputy dean at London Business School.
Robertson returned to the U.S. in 1998 to become dean of Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. During his seven-year tenure, he was credited with building Goizueta into one of the strongest schools at Emory and positioning it as a leading international business school. Prior to his return
to Penn, Robertson was executive faculty director of the Institute for Developing Nations at Emory.
His return to Philadelphia also was a homecoming for his wife, Diana Robertson, a former Wharton assistant professor
and professor at Emory, who became a visiting professor
in Wharton’s Legal Studies and Business Ethics Department in September.
For all his speed, former colleagues describe Robertson as keenly attentive and able to deftly balance the competing needs of a university community.
Al Hartgraves, an accounting professor who co-chaired the dean search that brought Robertson to Emory, said of Robertson, “His ability to work simultaneously with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and corporate leaders is unmatched, and he has the right temperament for dealing with a wide range of personalities.”
Robertson is as much a diplomat as an academic, said Hartgraves, who admires how Robertson led without conflict in the sometimes Balkanized world of a large university. “He has the ability to choose his battles carefully,” Hartgraves said, “and he rarely — if ever — makes any enemies.”
Another colleague admires Robertson’s laser-sharp focus on results.
“His best attribute is that he is able to make quick decisions
based on a value system that is anchored in excellence,” said Rajendra Srivastava, the Roberto C. Goizueta Chair in Marketing and e-Commerce and executive director of the Emory Marketing Institute. “Because he is able to delegate execution to trusted colleagues, he is able to cover a lot of ground and does not get bogged down in details.”
When Robertson seizes on an idea, “he jots down the item on a single sheet of paper,” added Srivastava, who got to know Robertson at London Business School in 1997. “He stockpiles
these to-do sheets of paper on his desk. His goal is to take care of these action items — crumpling the ‘done’ sheets and dumping them in the wastebasket — before he heads home.”
Robertson’s ability to work with people reflects his interest in human behavior. Early in his academic career, he struggled to choose between studying sociology or business. He chose business, but kept his focus on the human side. He is an expert
on consumer and competitive behavior.
“What I have done over my career is to incorporate sociology
into my research, specifically with my early research into consumer behavior and marketing,” he said.
At Wharton, Robertson will use his marketing knowledge to broaden awareness of the world’s oldest — and many say best — business school. Drawing on extensive international experience from his positions at Emory and London Business School, Robertson said he looks forward to helping build Penn’s global footprint and to champion Wharton as a force for good in the world.
“We can’t just say, ‘We’re 126 years old and we’ve done great things,’” Robertson said. “We should be very proud of what we’ve done. But we also have to ask, ‘Where do we go next to make new contributions and to create additional economic
and social value in the world?’”
- Scottish Roots for an International Career
- Implementing a Research Culture at Goizueta
- On Returning to Philly
- Outside the Office
- In the End
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