Karen Newman brings years of academia back to her native city to take over as the first female dean of the Daniels College of Business.

Newman, originally from the Denver area, has spent the years since graduating from high school living and working in the midwest and along the east coast.

She graduated from Purdue University with a B.S. in economics. She then went on to get her MBA and Ph.D in organizational behavior at the University of Chicago.

She has worked as a professor at Bucknell University, Case Western Reserve and Georgetown University. She is currently the dean of the business school at the University of Richmond.

During most of her graduate academic life and her career in academia she has been the only woman.

“I was one of 29 women in a class of 900 in my MBA program,” said Newman.

She was the only female faculty member in business at Bucknell and Case Western.

She said that there had been woman faculty before her but they had only lasted a year. She was the third female business faculty at Georgetown. Women comprmised about 10 percent of faculty and by the time she left, women made up 20-30 percent of the faculty.

She was the first female academic dean at University of Richmond and she will be the first female dean at the Daniel’s College of Business.

“Having said this, the only time that gender was an issue was in the MBA program. Not that I was discriminated against but that it was overwhelmingly male,” said Newman.

Originally, Newman had planned to make a career in the business world. And the one thing she absolutely did not want to be was a teacher. However, when she was in the MBA program she came to a realization that maybe she did not want to be a business woman after all.

“I realized that I could play the game with the men and win. But it would be hard to be a woman and have a life,” said Newman.

At this point she sat down with a pad of paper and made lists of pros and cons of each scenario.

She was able to be honest with herself that she was someone that liked to write research papers.

“I loved to be involved. I either needed a Ph.D in student personnel, and be a dean of students or I needed to get a Ph.D in something I could teach and do research,” said Newman.

She said that she never regretted her decision to be an academic. There were times that she thought about leaving academia for the business world but there was always an excuse not to for example her children.

Once she became a dean and had a management position in academia she lost the yearnings to enter the business world. Still, periodically, she gets bored and needs to move on.

“After five and a half years at the University of Richmond it was time for a change,” said Newman.

Newman thinks that DCB will be a good fit for her with its focus on ethics and International business.

“The DCB offers a more challenging complex organization, that’s what I am interested in,” said Newman.

She also said that it is a school on the move with a wide range of programs and dedicated faculty. And any changes that she makes will be “we’ changes made with both the faculty and students.

There were still more reasons that made the DCB so attractive to Newman.

“Not the least of which my parents still live her,” said Newman. “That was icing on the cake.”