IESE Business School to Appoint New Dean as Jordi Canals Steps Down

The University of Navarra’s IESE Business School has announced that its dean of the past 15 years, Jordi Canals, is to step down this summer.

Among the many achievements credited to Canals’ time at the helm of the Barcelona-based school are an increase to the full-time IESE MBA’s annual class size in 2010 (around 280 students enrolled in the program last fall) and expansions to its executive MBA offerings, including 2014’s launch of a global EMBA. The school has also developed and added to its international outposts under Canals’ tenure, most recently with the addition of a presence in Munich last year. 

Spain’s IESE has seen expansion despite Europe’s economic woes

International reach is as important to IESE as it is to the vast majority of the world’s leading business schools and it has continually collaborated in the development of independent institutions outside Spain, known to IESE as associated business schools. There is a large concentration of these schools in Latin America, an example being Mexico City’s IPADE, but Shanghai’s CEIBS is also a part of this network. Under Jordi Canals, this network has extended its reach in Africa, through schools in Kenya and Ivory Coast and, indeed, IESE Business School launched an Africa Initiative in 2009 to cement its commitment to the region and “the education of the next generation of African business leaders and entrepreneurs,” according to the school.

Jordi Canals emphasized the context in which much of these changes at IESE Business School have occurred, saying that “they have a special meaning considering that many of them were undertaken in the middle of a deep economic crisis in Europe.”

A successor is expected to be appointed in June, giving the new dean the chance to start his tenure with the coming academic year at IESE Business School, which runs a full-time MBA program on the traditional two-year US model. From its latest graduating class, 29% of IESE MBA graduates took jobs in the consulting industry and 22% in the financial services, with the class as a whole recording an average post-MBA salary of €84,732 (c. US$96,000 at today's rates – you can read more about that latest class’ employment outcomes here).

Jordi Canals to stay on as professor

The school’s current dean will be staying on as a professor at the school. Holding a PhD in economics from the University of Barcelona, Jordi Canals also undertook postdoctoral work at Harvard Business School and has previously held visiting scholar positions with the World Bank and the IMF. His academic expertise centers on matters of corporate strategy, corporate governance and globalization. Canals paid tribute to IESE Business School’s “high ideals and the willingness to serve,” adding that “it is a great honor to work at the University of Navarra.”