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The Carroll School of Management strengthened the business and academic experience in its leadership ranks with the hiring this summer of Elizabeth “Betsy” Griffith as its associate dean of graduate programs.
Griffith comes to Boston College after a five-year stint at Georgetown University, where she was a senior associate dean responsible for MBA marketing and new program development. She succeeds Jeffrey Ringuest, who stepped down after eight years.
“BC is a great institution,” said Griffith, who earned her MBA at the University of Virginia’s Darden School and her doctorate in liberal studies from Georgetown. “It’s values-based and associated with the Jesuits - those were major hooks for me. [Carroll School Dean] Andy Boynton is a visionary leader. This is a big challenge, and very exciting for me.”
New ideas and insights are just some of the assets Griffith possesses, according to Boynton. “Betsy Griffith brings talent, experience, expertise, energy and leadership to our graduate programs. In short, she’s a game changer. We can’t wait for her to get started.”
Griffith’s path to academia followed an impressive two-decade run in the non-profit world where she worked for such entities as Monticello, the Phillips Collection, National Public Radio, and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. In those positions, she worked with finance, budgeting, accounting, treasury, human resources, information technology, facilities, contracts, board liaison and customer service.
Now, Griffith looks forward to bringing this “real-world” perspective to the Carroll School.
“Anybody who has been an executive,” said Griffith, “who has run multiple units, made dozens of hires, led teams, customer service initiatives and software implementations, dealt with budgets and audits, and participated in hundreds of board meetings – that person has a sense of what employers look for in MBAs. So you develop a little bit of radar for the kind of training MBA students – and students in other graduate business programs – need in both a curricular and a co-curricular sense.”
Griffith’s transition to academia started in 2009 when she joined Georgetown, beginning a second career she had always contemplated.
“I had a great run in executive and non-profits, did a lot of good work, but I wasn’t going to learn anything new in year 21,” said Griffith. “And I had always had an interest in education and mentoring, so I made a conscious decision to pursue a second career in higher education.”
At Georgetown, Griffith took leadership of the university’s new MBA evening program, helping the school rapidly rise in the rankings and bringing about growth in applications, enrollment and revenues.
Griffith lauds the Carroll School’s “broad and value-based” view of management, pointing to its various research centers in Corporate Citizenship, Retirement Research, Work and Family, and Leadership and Ethics.
“I like what it says about how BC looks at a business education. The Carroll School, particularly through the CEO Club, is very tightly woven into the Boston business community. These can be resources to the MBA program, and that’s a richness most MBA programs don’t have. I look forward to working with the very talented and dedicated people who run these centers and the graduate programs.”