BCBusiness

70 BCBUSINESS DECEMBER/JANUARY 2019 TANYA GOEHRING A fter graduating from Princeton University, dual Canadian and American cit- izen Robert Helsley landed his rst faculty role at UBC three decades ago. Helsley, now in his second ve-year term as dean of the Sauder School of Business, talks about what drew him to leave the U.S. and why the school has high aspirations. This much I know… "I believe in the power of education for all peoples and societies. It's been transforma- tive for me, and the oppor- tunity to have that e‚ect on others is really rewarding. I would say everybody who is involved in the university at some level is impacted by the ability of education to change the path of a young person's life. Personally, the culture of diversity in Vancouver has been so important; there is so much respect for the benets of diversity, which you don't really have in the U.S.—it's insu- lar. It's so much richer here; we have [63,000] students who have come from 160 countries in the undergraduate courses." "There is, however, a traditional view that busi- ness schools are focused on monetary measures of success. My feeling is that there's a tipping point, and increasingly the social impact of business is a bigger part of the conversa- tion, and one of the key things our school does is to think about that. In recent years, we've tried to create a higher purpose." "We spend time talking about values in business—it's good for an institution to have something bigger that it's trying to focus on—and the fact that there's a potential for business to contribute to posi- tive social change. There's a demand from consumers and employees that companies have a set of values and live up to them. People want to feel like they are making a di‚erence. It's crystallized in recent years that our students will be taking on leadership roles in the future, and we would like them to be the kind of leaders that drive positive social change. So they think about how their business impacts society, social outcomes, the environ- ment and broader things." "Business schools tend to be isolated—and I've always seen that as a lost opportunity. So we've been consciously trying to create ways to engage with others at university to nd a new way for the business school to add value. One area where we are truly unique is the dual degree, where stu- dents can study for an under- graduate degree in almost anything at the university and study for a master's in busi- ness at the same time [and an additional six months], which is really cool. The idea is that if you take someone who has a technical or musi- cal interest, for example, and add some business training, it makes them much more e‚ective in what they can turn it into as a career. It not only adds to the diversity of the school, but parents love it, too." " Better Business Robert Helsley wants students at UBC Sauder to think about more than money by Lucy Hyslop LU NC H W I T H LU C Y ( quality time ) F U N FACT Helsley lives with his wife, Beth, with whom he has two grown-up sons, in Vancouver's Kitsilano. Outside of academia, he plays guitar and has a collection of seven classical and jazz instruments T H E DE E T S School Master P OSITION: Dean of UBC's Sauder School of Business and Grosvenor Professor of Cities, Busi- ness Economics and Public Policy since 2012 AG E : 62 P R E V IOUS ROL E S : Professor and chair in real estate development at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley; director of the UBC Centre for Real Estate and Urban Economics K U D OS : Co-editor of the Journal of Urban Economics ; former co- chair of the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics, UC Berkeley SCHO OL : PhD and MA in economics from Princeton University LU NCH : Najib's Special deep-fried cauliflower at Nuba's Gastown location

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