Tom Steenberg, Dean of the Owen School of Management at Vanderbilt University
Nearly everyone agrees that the job of a new business school dean can be demanding: He or she must visit and listen to faculty, alumni, staff and students; he or she must hone a fundraising pitch; and he or she must build strong relationships with academic overseers.
So when you add to that new list the possibility of building a new campus from scratch 850 miles away, it adds a whole new dimension to the job.That’s the ambitious challenge facing Tom Steenberg, who in July began his first year as dean of Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Management in Nashville, Tennessee, after signing a contract to build a new Vanderbilt campus in West Palm Beach, Fla., centered on providing business education.
Recruited from the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business, Steenberg seems to be relishing the challenge of creating a Vanderbilt satellite campus. “For me, that’s exactly what I wanted. It’s growth-oriented. Let’s do something interesting. You’re only going to be a dean for a short time. Ten years is not that long. If you’re going to do something big, you’d better get going now. Then you want to be in a place where you want to do something special,” he says.
West Palm Beach satellite campus to require $700 million investment
How special is it? Building the campus would require an investment of as much as $700 million. It would employ 80 to 90 faculty members and enroll about 1,000 students for master’s and doctoral degrees. The Vanderbilt satellite campus would be located on the western edge of downtown along South Tamarind Avenue, on five acres owned by Palm Beach County and two acres owned by the City of West Palm Beach.
Steenberg believes Vanderbilt is ideal for the region. “We’ve seen a lot of capital flow south over the last 20 years,” he explains. “Having a campus in Florida would allow for growth that matches our brand. We’re in a city that’s booming economically, and that’s what this city is experiencing. Like real estate, that growth is consistent. We should have a real estate program to take advantage of two markets that have seen capital flow in recent years.”
“The other thing that’s interesting is that a lot of finance jobs are moving south to Florida and there’s a talent shortage in the region. There’s not enough supply for the demand for talent. We want to be a part of that. It’s also not obvious that finance jobs are across many disciplines. Some are completely redline finance, some are more technical jobs like financial engineering and data science. We’re launching a connected computing college, which will be part of their core work, and they’ll be able to create programs at the intersection of finance and data science. We’ll also have an EMBA program or a flexible MBA program. When you look at the opportunity from a business school perspective, if you’re in a place where the economy is growing and that aligns with your brand, why wouldn’t you consider it?”
“We don’t want to be second-rate. Business school is expensive.”
Steenberg cautions that the new campus faces many hurdles. “There is a lot that needs to be done before we can move forward with this plan. We need to raise a lot of money, but we have reason to believe this campus can do it. Most fundraising efforts have a quiet period, but this is different. Within 18 months to a year, we will know exactly where we stand. There are no public figures, but we need to raise hundreds of millions of dollars. We don’t want to do something second-rate. Business school is expensive.”
Bloomberg reports that wealthy Floridians, including Steven Ross, namesake of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, have already pledged about $100 million, provided Vanderbilt secures the land. John Winkelried, a Vanderbilt trustee and CEO of asset management firm TPG Capital, and Cody Crowell, a Vanderbilt alumnus and managing partner of Palm Beach real estate investment firm Frisbee Group, are credited with hatching the idea to bring Vanderbilt to the city. But the total fundraising to get the campus up and running could approach $700 million.
The plan comes after the University of Florida’s failed attempt to build a campus in downtown West Palm Beach. The school would have offered graduate programs in business, engineering and law with a focus on artificial intelligence, fintech and cybersecurity. The deal came to an end last year after UF could not come to an agreement over naming rights with Palm Beach billionaire Jeff Green, who donated five acres of the 12-acre campus. UF decided to build its graduate campus in downtown Jacksonville instead.
Vanderbilt University President Daniel Diermeier: “What’s your moonshot idea?”
Vanderbilt President Daniel Diermeier forged ahead, undaunted. “We’re going to be bold and try things,” says Steenberg. “Florida is very growth-oriented. Owen is a small school that offers a high-touch MBA. People love the school. What people value is the small class sizes and the intimate atmosphere. So this will be a significant growth opportunity for us.”
Owen’s two-year MBA program has annual enrollment of about 160 students, with much smaller enrollments in its Executive MBA program, which offers a portfolio of master’s degrees in healthcare administration, accounting, finance and marketing. The school’s full-time MBA program is ranked 21st in the U.S. by Poets&Quants, up six places from the previous year.
“I couldn’t be happier,” Steenberg adds. “I started looking for a place where there was an opportunity to grow. I got my PhD at Yale when it was transitioning from a public policy degree to a business school. Since then, the school has grown incredibly. Vanderbilt as a university is growth-oriented. ‘Dare to grow’ is Daniel’s motto. He asks, ‘What is your big idea?’ He’s so enthusiastic and supportive of the business school. I’m really lucky. I knew I could go to a place where I wanted to grow and get big. It’s all there. Nashville is thriving as a city. We have a really compelling story of being a modern university, a modern business school that people want to be a part of. If someone is building a legacy for themselves, they want to be associated with that.”
Steenberg leaves Darden after 11 years at the school. As Master Teacher of Marketing, he held a variety of leadership roles during that time, including Senior Associate Dean for Executive Education and Faculty Development and, for a three-year term from 2020-2023, Senior Associate Dean of Darden’s flagship Residential MBA program. Prior to joining Darden in 2012, Steenberg taught at Harvard Business School for nine years. Prior to joining academia, he worked at Xerox Corporation for eight years.
New Mission Statement
Steenberg earned a master’s degree in statistics from the University of Michigan in 1992 and a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Boston University in 1990, before earning a doctorate in marketing from Yale University in 2004.
In his first year as Owen dean, Steenberg led a revision of the school’s mission statement, moved the undergraduate business minor to the business school, revamped Owen’s executive education offerings and tripled the school’s open enrollment programs. “There was nothing wrong with the old mission statement, ‘a world-class education at the individual level,’ we wanted to think aspirationally about what we wanted to do. We just finalized it, and our new mission is, ‘to create opportunities to discover, grow and succeed in business and beyond.’ It’s the desire to do something special for our students, to push them far beyond what they thought they could do. That’s our focus. Making those connections for people and opening their eyes to real opportunities. That’s the idea. How do we get into a space where things really take off? Finally, if I could be anything, I want it to be a high-potential school for growth, where people can self-actualize and become their best selves.”
For Steenberg, that means strengthening the focus on AI, real estate, entrepreneurship, healthcare and the creative economy.
“We moved our undergraduate business minor to the business school. The minor had been there for seven years, but it was run by the College Board. Vanderbilt is a liberal arts school, so we don’t have a professional school in the undergraduate program. Students are going to McKinsey and Goldman, and they need more of a business education than they have now. We moved the minor to Owen, and Kelly Goldsmith and Gary Kimble are running the program and are overhauling the curriculum.
“The job market has improved significantly.”
“Companies expect you to know something. They’re not going to spend your first year on the job teaching you everything you need to know. The job market has changed a lot. For I-banking jobs, interviews happen in the spring of your sophomore year. With the help of generous parents, we’re doing a Wall Street prep program this summer and then a series of workshops next fall, so when you interview in the spring of your sophomore year, you’ll be able to compete with anyone.”
The school’s restructuring of its executive education portfolio has led to a significant increase in enrollment. “Part of that is COVID,” he says. “We need to look at alternative formats like a flexible MBA and figure out what that looks like in Nashville and Florida. We’re going to start at the intersection of data science and AI in finance before we go to South Florida. We can collaborate within the university on that. Philosophically, it’s similar to Yale. Yale’s School of Management recognized that it was part of a great university and took advantage of that. The future of business is collaboration with other departments, including the data science department. If you’re small, you look for friends. I’m looking for friends and I’m in an environment where that pays off.”
What has surprised him most since becoming Owen’s dean is the lack of any major surprises. “My uncle left Xerox to run a small company as CEO, and they had to restate their profits in the first three months because of fraud,” Steenberg recalls. “He hung in there until the end, but they were back to zero. You never know when you’re going to jump in until you’ve been there. This is exactly what I expected.”
Don’t miss: Meet Vanderbilt University’s Owen School of Business’ Class of 2025 or Vanderbilt University hires University of Virginia’s Darden Starr as new dean
