UVA Darden Report Summer '25

THE DARDEN EXPERIENCE

Join 4K alumni who contributed last year.

Unrestricted gifts support half of all scholarships.

FORGING THE FUTURE

As the new year dawns, we at Darden reaffirm our purpose: to educate and inspire doers with the skills, smarts, and sense of purpose and ethics to create a better future for our world.

In 2025, our definition of high performance in business is more pertinent than ever. It means bringing people together to create extraordinary value for business and society. Led by a faculty and staff that are second to none and supported by an alumni base that is 19,000 strong and 90 countries wide, Darden enters the year in a position of strength.

This issue of The Darden Report explores what’s next for Darden (Page 14). While we must embrace rapid change as an opportunity, we will preserve what makes Darden unique in the world of graduate business education. Our student-centered and collaborative culture united by honor and excellence, and the transformational experiences delivered by the world’s best B-school faculty will never be compromised. We introduce you to the five newest Darden professors on Page 8 and offer a sample of faculty thought leadership on Page 28 in our feature on how live sports have become the latest battlefront for streaming services. This issue also shares leadership insights and personal journeys of Darden alumni. Warren Thompson (MBA ’83) leveraged learnings from his father’s produce stand to eventually build a $1 billion business (Page 34). Kelsie Chaudoin (EMBA ’22) is using her Darden degree to become the ultimate program manager as head coach of the University of Southern California women’s rowing team (Page 36).

We also spend time with Dave LaCross (MBA ’78), who with his wife Kathy has dedicated more than $100 million to transform Darden through various initiatives, including launching

In 2025, our definition of high performance in business is more pertinent than ever. It means bringing people together to create extraordinary value for business and society.

the LaCross Institute for Ethical AI in Business and establishing professorships dedicated to AI expertise. On Page 20, LaCross shares his insights on where AI is headed and why it matters to us all.

Reflecting on nearly a decade as Darden’s dean, I am filled with pride for all that Darden faculty, staff, alumni and students have achieved. I am also humbled and honored to be appointed to a third term by University of Virginia leadership. Darden’s mission and values continue to motivate me each day.

Together, we will boldly pursue Darden’s ambitious future while preserving all that makes Darden “not business school as usual.”

SCOTT C. BEARDSLEY Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration

EXPLORING AI’S ENDLESS POSSIBILITIES

With the new Ethical AI Institute, UVA and Darden are betting on their ability to influence the future of AI for good. Where might the possibilities lead?

WHAT’S NEXT FOR DARDEN?

As change in higher education intensifies, Darden’s leaders have a plan to innovate while preserving what matters most.

THIRD TERM FOR

As winners emerge from the streaming wars, the fight is on to replace TV and live sports are the biggest prize. Will cable broadcasters be knocked out?

FUNCTIONAL LEADERSHIP

Functional leadership is having a moment. It’s time we all learn what it is, how it’s taught and how it can benefit any organization.

Warren Thompson (MBA ’83) shares lessons from a decadeslong journey that started with his father’s produce business and led to a billion-dollar organization.

DEAN BEARDSLEY

The Darden Report is published twice a year with private donations to the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation.

© 2025 Darden School Foundation Winter 2025, Volume 52, No. 1

University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Office of Communication & Marketing

P. O. Box 7225 Charlottesville, Virginia 22906-7225 USA communication@darden.virginia.edu

Scott C. Beardsley Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration

Robert Weiler President, Darden School Foundation

Juliet K. Daum (TEP ’22) Chief Marketing and Communications Officer

EDITORS

Jay Hodgkins

McGregor McCance

ART DIRECTION & DESIGN

Hyphen

WRITERS

Lauren Foster

Dave Hendrick

Caroline Mackey

Molly Mitchell

Seb Murray

Sally Parker

CLASS NOTES EDITOR

Egidijus Paurys

PHOTOGRAPHY

Tom Cogill

Tom Daly

Ali Johnson

Jack Looney

Caroline Mackey

ILLUSTRATION

Blake Cale

Jamie Cullen

Hyphen

Danny Ivan

Petra Sitaru

Marat Vahitov

Chaudoin (EMBA ’22) Bill Blue (MBA ’85) Lisa Bobb-Semple (MBA ’02) Evan Inra (EMBA ’08)

Chaudoin (EMBA ’22)

3 Finance (7)

4 Best Classroom Experience (2)

6 Greatest Resources for Women (9)

7 Best Career Prospects (2)

8 Best Administered (Not ranked)

8 Most Family Friendly (10)

DARDEN DOMINATES

DARDEN CAME OUT on top for the second year in a row in The Princeton Review’s Best Business Schools rankings of all graduate MBA schools, and for the second year in a row landed in the Top 5 of the Bloomberg Businessweek 2024–25 Best Business Schools ranking.

In the Bloomberg Businessweek ranking, Darden was ranked the No. 5 Full-Time MBA

Program in the United States and No. 1 among public schools. Darden landed top category rankings, including No. 3 for compensation and No. 6 for learning.

With 10 Top 10 placements in this year’s The Princeton Review ranking, Darden has earned more Top 10 recognitions over the past two years than any other graduate business school in the U.S.

Class

of 2024 Sustains Employment Success Amid Shifting Job Market

The Full-Time MBA Class of 2024 met the challenges of a recalibrating job market, maintaining a median base salary of $175,000 and signing bonus of $30,000 for the fourth year in a row.

Within three months of graduation, 90 percent of graduates seeking employment accepted a full-time job offer and 93 percent received at least one job offer within that same time frame.

Leading employers of the class include Amazon, Bank of America, Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey, JP Morgan Chase, Microsoft, Wells Fargo and Bain.

Consulting again led all industries as 42.5 percent of graduates entered that field, followed by financial services (26.5 percent) and technology (8.8 percent). Compared to previous years, more graduates chose to work in the energy, retail and health care industries.

Among job functions, more graduates chose finance/accounting, general management and marketing roles than the previous year. In total, nearly 50% of graduates accepted a job in those functions.

During the summer of 2024, 100 percent of the Full-Time MBA Class of 2025 completed an internship.

Read the full 2024–25 Employment Report at darden.virginia.edu/mba/ career-support/employment-report.

DARDEN WELCOMES 550PLUS STUDENTS ACROSS PROGRAMS

Darden welcomed more than 500 students to Grounds in Charlottesville in August at an “all-Darden” event, including members of the Full-Time MBA, Executive MBA and Part-Time MBA programs. The Full-Time MBA and Executive MBA students will be part of the Class of 2026, while Part-Time MBA students will earn their degrees at different paces.

MEET THE MBA s

356

119

72 Full-Time MBA students Executive MBA students Part-Time MBA students

28 36 21 16 19 3.5 countries represented percent women

percent U.S. minority students

percent first-generation advanced degree students

percent served in the military

average undergraduate GPA

MEET THE MSBA s

Darden also welcomed the Master of Science in business analytics (MSBA) Class of 2025 in August. The MSBA is presented jointly by Darden and the UVA McIntire School of Commerce.

59

31

12 students

percent women

percent U.S. minority students

percent hold advanced degrees

20 8

years average work experience

IN CAMPAIGN’S FINAL YEAR, IMPACT SOARS PAST $600 MILLION

In the final year of the Powered by Purpose campaign, make your mark on Darden’s future. Together, we can shape the next generation of ethical leaders and innovators. Contact Senior Associate Vice President of Advancement Samantha Hartog at HartogS@darden.virginia.edu.

PROPELLED BY $81.2 MILLION in gifts from Darden School alumni and friends last fiscal year, the Powered by Purpose campaign reached $483.6 million in support of Darden as of 30 June 2024. Including matching gifts and gifts held outside the foundation, the total impact was $587.6 million as of 30 June, and has since risen to more than $600 million. More than 70 percent of alumni have given to the campaign, which ends 30 June 2025.

Fundraising highlights from the most recent fiscal year included:

30 percent alumni participation in the Darden Annual Fund, resulting in $5.7 million raised

45 major gifts of $100,000 or more, including 12 from first-time major donors

6 new members inducted to the Principal Donors Society

$8.1 million in Darden Reunion Giving, with a record 900-plus alumni attending reunion

$1 million raised from 1,465 donors on Day for Darden 2024

The year also included record-breaking gifts and the launch of transformative initiatives. Faculty Forward, Milestone II of the Powered by Purpose campaign, launched in fall 2023 with a focus on hiring, retaining and developing faculty, advancing transformational learning, and growing Darden’s thought leadership infrastructure. The goals of Faculty Forward received a significant boost when Dave (MBA ’78) and Kathy LaCross added to a prior gift to commit more than $100 million, the largest gift in Darden School Foundation history. A $5 million gift from Steve (MBA ’63) and Phyllis Bachand, matched by an additional $5 million from the UVA Bicentennial Professors Fund, established the Stephen E. Bachand University Professorship, with Professor Ed Freeman as the inaugural chairholder.

A record 900-plus alumni attended the 2024 Darden Reunion Weekend.

MATCHING GIFT LAUNCHED TO SPARK FACULTY BUILDING RENOVATION

An artist's rendering of a new collaborative space planned for the Faculty Office Building renovation, which is a critical project to support the world's top-ranked business school faculty. The design is preliminary and subject to University of Virginia review.

A long-planned renovation of the Faculty Office Building on Darden Grounds is now supported by a unique matching gift challenge to create a space that supports the evolving needs of the School’s faculty.

Dave (MBA ’78) and Kathy LaCross pledged $6.5 million toward the renovation of the building, with Darden contributing an additional $1 million to create a $7.5 million matching gift. This challenge invites others to help raise $15 million for the project, enabling the renovation to move forward.

The current Faculty Office Building was designed over 25 years ago, before the recent growth in faculty and degree programs.

Darden’s innovative educational approach requires flexible spaces that foster both collaboration and individual work. Since 2015, Darden

has expanded its faculty more than 40%, with members dedicated to breaking down academic silos and co-designing courses that integrate strategy, ethics, marketing and more.

The renovated building will include collaborative hubs, faculty pavilions and innovation spaces designed to enhance team teaching and interdisciplinary projects. Work areas will provide faculty with the necessary space to develop cutting-edge research and curriculum, while meeting rooms will facilitate the seamless collaboration essential to Darden’s teaching model.

Head Start on Student Housing

Darden held a celebratory ground-breaking in October to mark the start of construction of a major project to provide modern residences for students on the School’s Grounds. When complete, two residential buildings will provide a combined 218 apartments. One of the buildings will be constructed between Wilkinson Courtyard and the existing Darden parking garage. The second will be situated on the west side of the Abbott Center.

ROBERT A.M. STERN ARCHITECTS

DARDEN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS CHARLOTTESVILLE, VIRGINIA

5 NEW PROFESSORS

JOIN DARDEN FACULTY

Darden welcomed five new professors ahead of the 2024–25 academic year who will teach and do research in finance, accounting, marketing, business operations, strategy and data analysis. In addition, Professors Pnina Feldman, Rory McDonald and Chris Parker, who came to Darden as visiting professors for the 2023–24 academic year, became tenured professors. Feldman and Parker are now tenured associate professors in the Technology and Operations Management area while McDonald is a tenured associate professor in the Strategy, Ethics & Entrepreneurship area.

RAMONA DAGOSTINO

Ramona Dagostino is an assistant professor in the Finance area. She joins Darden from the University of Rochester Simon Business School, where she was an assistant professor. She earned her Ph.D. in finance from London Business School, and her research focuses on banking, political economy and municipal finance.

Tom Davenport joins Darden as the Bodily Bicentennial Professor in Analytics, a visiting scholar position. He will maintain his role as President’s Distinguished Professor of Information Technology and Management at Babson College. Davenport is known for his pioneering work on “competing on analytics,” and he will concentrate on writing, industry research and curriculum development during his time at Darden.

TOM DAVENPORT

RITA GUNN

Rita Gunn joins Darden as an assistant professor in the Accounting area from the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University. She earned her Ph.D. in accounting from Northwestern University. Her research focuses on the impacts of mergers and acquisitions on financial reporting and capital markets.

SAM LEVY

Sam Levy joins Darden as an assistant professor in the Marketing area. Before Darden, he earned his Ph.D. in marketing from Carnegie Mellon University. Levy’s research investigates customer analytics in different contexts such as privacy, data fusion and pro-social behavior. He will teach core marketing courses.

RAY CHARLES HOWARD

Ray Charles “Chuck” Howard joins Darden as an associate professor in the Marketing area from the Mays School of Business at Texas A&M University. He received his Ph.D. in marketing from the University of British Columbia. Howard’s research interests focus on misprediction in financial decision-making and social contexts.

“What I’m most excited about is the idea of how digital twins will change the retail industry. I think there are a lot of promising solutions, whether it’s creating virtual replicas of stores or consumers and customer journeys. This is a revolution that will happen in the near future.”

— Sam Levy on his research interests

DARDEN EXPANDS OFFERINGS WITH NEW COURSES

Darden introduced a range of new courses for the 2024–25 academic year, covering topics from economic uncertainty and private equity to responsible use of artificial intelligence and venture capital finance. New course offerings this year include:

“Managing Economic Uncertainty”

TAUGHT BY Professor Bo Sun

This course provides students with the analytical tools and strategic frameworks to navigate the complexities of a rapidly changing economic landscape. By examining key issues like geopolitical risks, supply chain disruptions and policy shifts, the course equips students to turn challenges into opportunities for competitive advantage.

“Private Equity”

TAUGHT BY Professor Elena Loutskina

This course provides an indepth exploration of the private equity industry, focusing on the investment phase and the financial intricacies of deal-making. The course equips students with the analytical tools to evaluate investment strategies, company valuations and the performance of private equity funds.

“Venture Capital Finance”

TAUGHT BY Professor Rus Abuzov

This course focuses on applying financial methods to evaluate early-stage companies, guiding managers in making informed investment and financing decisions. Covering the full venture lifecycle from startup financing to exit strategies, the course explores sources of capital, company valuation, deal structuring and the institutional dynamics of venture capital.

“Minds and Machines: Flourishing in the Age of AI”

TAUGHT BY Professor Roshni Raveendhran

This course explores the intersection of human psychology and artificial intelligence, equipping future leaders to harness AI for positive impact. The course examines how AI influences human attitudes, cognition and behavior, while emphasizing the responsible integration of AI to enhance productivity, well-being and ethical leadership.

Darden

Professors Hit the Bookshelves With New Books

In The CEO Playbook for Strategic Transformation, Professor Scott Snell helps CEOs and other senior leaders reduce the risks and see through the overwhelming complexity of a major change in organizational strategy. It offers a comprehensive framework involving four major tasks for leaders: 1) Establish and Communicate the Urgent Need; 2) Engage Stakeholders; 3) Mobilize the Organization; and 4) Develop Organizational Agility. Snell provides a set of self-assessments, frameworks for action and interventions to help senior leaders succeed at their most challenging and important task.

Defeating Dengue: A Multistakeholder Approach to Problem Solving by Professor Ed Freeman and Andrew Sell, a former senior researcher in Darden’s Institute for Business in Society, tells the remarkable story of how an unlikely group of stakeholders including George Tahija (MBA ’86) combined expertise, innovation and determination to reduce the incidences of dengue infections in an Indonesian community by 77%. Lessons about building a coalition that could plan and execute a strategy that included logistics, communication, education, phased-implementation, funding and more make the work as much a business book as a public health story.

What if You Tried This at Work: A Field Guide of Possibilities for Becoming an Invaluable Manager by Professor Mark Haskins presents a new kind of “how” for managers seeking to expand and enhance their interpersonal management capabilities. It provides 36 stories and sound wisdom based on 40 years of experience to help managers pursue a personal blueprint for flexibility, personalization and exploration.

FACULTY AWARDS & ACCOLADES

Postdoctoral Research

Associate Vaska Atta-Darkua, in a joint work with Bob Bruner and Scott C. Miller, won the 2024 Georges GallaisHamonno Prize in Historical Finance for the paper “Investor Reactions to Legislative Liberalization and the Run-up in British Share Prices, 1844 to 1845.”

Gaurav Chiplunkar was named to Poets & Quants’ 2024 Top 40 Under 40 Best Professors list.

Luca Cian and co-authors won the 2024 Behavioral Science and Policy Association Publication Award for Innovation in Behavioral Policy for the paper “Addressing Climate Change With Behavioral

Science: A Global Intervention Tournament in 63 Countries.”

Rich Evans was named a Kroner Center for Financial Research Grant Recipient for the research project “Benchmarking Benchmarks in Pension Funds.”

Allison Elias was a finalist for the Hagley Prize, awarded by the Business History Conference for the Best Book in Business History.

Ed Freeman received an Honorary Doctorate from HEC Paris.

Justin Hopkins and co-authors won the Carl Liggio Memorial Award from the

Association of Corporate Counsel for the paper “Independent or Informed? How Combining the Roles of Corporate Secretary and Chief Legal Officer Impacts Legal Risk.”

The research team led by Dennie Kim was awarded an NIH grant for “Addressing Structural Racism in Heart Failure Care and Outcomes: A Mixed Methods Evaluation of the Social Structure of Care Delivery.”

Saras Sarasvathy received an honorary doctorate conferred by the faculty of science, management and technology at the Athens University of Economics.

PROFESSOR PNINA FELDMAN EVOLVING WITH THE TECHNOLOGY OF OUR TIMES

BY DAVE HENDRICK

Pnina Feldman, Darden's Bigelow Research Associate Professor in Business Administration, came of age at a seemingly perfect time for someone interested in exploring how digital technologies affect operations. Moving to the United States from Israel to pursue a Ph.D. in the mid-2000s, novel models for delivery of goods and services were exploding, with offerings like Amazon Prime gaining traction and Netflix’s DVDs-bymail delighting consumers across the country.

“There were many companies that suddenly seemed unbelievably great at providing a service, and I kept observing these changes as a consumer,” said Feldman, a professor in the Technology and Operations Management area at Darden.

One of her first journal articles following completion of her Ph.D. highlighted the benefits of selling subscriptions for services despite the impact on congestion, offering a new perspective at a time when most companies were still charging per-use fees. Fast forward a decade and you’d be hard pressed to find a tech service provider that does not offer subscriptions, from software-as-a-service providers to Spotify and StitchFix.

For other research ideas, Feldman has followed her curiosity, such as when she wondered why an Oakland, California, pizzeria was no longer offering delivery via a food service app.

Forced to pick up a pizza instead of relying on the usual delivery, Feldman saw a note on the pizzeria’s door, which explained that they were no longer offering delivery because it compromised service in the dining room.

“That got me asking, ’What is going on here?’ It seemed

Professor Pnina Feldman is now a tenured professor in the Technology and Operations Management area after joining Darden on a visiting professorship before the 2023–24 academic year.

like it should be a win-win. Platforms should be helping restaurants reach untapped markets,” Feldman said.

Instead, Feldman and her co-authors realized the “negative externality” on dining customers from delivery customers made existing contracts between restaurants and delivery apps suboptimal. “So, we came up with a contract to fix the issue,” said Feldman.

The paper, “Managing Relationships Between Restaurants and Food Delivery Platforms: Conflict, Contracts, and Coordination,” was published in 2023.

An Unexpected Path

While carving a path as a researcher, Feldman has gained a reputation as an exceptional teacher, a role she inadvertently began preparing for in her youth. A math enthusiast as a child, Feldman remembers being paid to tutor others in the subject as early as middle school. Later, enlisted in the Israel Defense Forces, Feldman served as a soldier-teacher in a military boarding school.

An industrial engineer as an undergraduate, she pursued a master’s degree in the same field. Feldman’s master’s experience with research and teaching convinced her to pursue a Ph.D. She deliberated between more industrial engineering or operations management at a business school, ultimately choosing the latter. “I found the big-picture questions and the intersection between operations and other business fields — like strategy, marketing and economics — really interesting and relevant,” said Feldman.

She went to the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and “never looked back.” Feldman spent years teaching at the University of California’s Haas School of Business, then Boston University’s Questrom School of Business. She earned accolades at both stops for her teaching and research, including Boston University’s school-wide Scholar-Teacher of the Year Award in 2022.

With two young sons, tenure and a leadership position with the undergraduate honors program at Questrom, Feldman said she and her husband were “very happy” in Boston, but the prospect of a one-year visiting professorship at Darden brought Feldman to Charlottesville in 2023.

“WALK AROUND DARDEN WITH HER, AND YOU WILL SEE STUDENTS ALTER THEIR PATH TO COME SAY HELLO.”

— PROFESSOR DOUG THOMAS

‘What

Is This Energy in a Classroom at 8 a.m.?’

An experienced teacher, Feldman said she wasn’t prepared for the Darden classroom. At an 8 a.m. class on Valentine’s Day, the class first broke into its section cheer. Shortly thereafter, representatives from the Office of Student Affairs and Second Year students came in and started throwing chocolate to students.

“What is this energy in a classroom at 8 a.m.?” Feldman said she remembers thinking. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life. I love it!”

Then, Professor Doug Thomas began leading the class through a case. Students were enthusiastically participating; everyone seemed locked in.

Feldman said she had two simultaneous and contradictory thoughts: “I am not sure I can pull this off,” and “This is where I want to be.”

Feldman was offered a visiting position in 2023 and took the leap, quickly acclimating to the Darden classroom.

Having joined a unique community, Feldman feels compelled to participate fully. Her office door is literally always open, and she said she tries to show up to every extracurricular activity she can, from Darden Cup events to cold calls.

“I think it helps the classroom environment,” Feldman said. “When people are comfortable with each other outside the classroom, they are less afraid to be vulnerable, take risks and make mistakes in it.”

Thomas said he and his colleagues knew Feldman brought important research, as well as a track record of teaching accolades, but her first year at Darden still managed to impress.

“I FOUND THE BIGPICTURE QUESTIONS AND THE INTERSECTION BETWEEN OPERATIONS AND OTHER BUSINESS FIELDS — LIKE STRATEGY, MARKETING AND ECONOMICS — REALLY INTERESTING AND RELEVANT.”

“She immediately established herself as a top-level, student-centered teacher, beloved by students,” Thomas said. “Walk around Darden with her, and you will see students alter their path to come say hello.”

After a successful year in Charlottesville, Feldman received an offer of a full-time, tenured professorship ahead of the 2024-25 academic year. Broaching the topic of a permanent move with her big city-raised children, Feldman said it was not a tough sell.

“What do you mean ’if’ we’re going to stay?” Feldman said her younger son asked her. “Of course we’re going to stay. Virginia is our home.”

WHAT’S NEXT FOR DARDEN ?

BIG ISSUES THAT WILL DETERMINE THE FUTURE FOR THE DARDEN SCHOOL OF BUSINESS

BY MCGREGOR MCCANCE

BY

MOST MEASURES, Darden enjoys an enviable position in the universe of business education. A reputation for the world’s best classroom experience, earned and sustained across decades. Record application volumes, student excellence, career outcomes and rankings from multiple sources reflect Darden’s consistent excellence. Generous philanthropic support that powers curricular programs and professorships, opens doors to students, and enables research centers and improved facilities.

But even with its status as the world’s best public business school, nothing is guaranteed for tomorrow.

Competition in the business education space is growing. Enrollment of U.S. students in higher education and in business schools is wavering. Schools without robust financial aid inevitably lose quality potential students to others with more assistance to offer. Darden receives no budget or subsidy support from the University of Virginia or the Commonwealth of Virginia.

Now in its 70th year since launching in 1955, Darden enters a critical period.

“We must move forward with our eyes wide open,” said Dean Scott Beardsley. “Darden has an exciting future ahead if we are thoughtful, prudent, creative and determined in our response to the enormous challenges and opportunities that we encounter together.”

Here are five key issues Darden will face in the coming years. While the list is not exhaustive, it explores some of what’s ahead. →⃝

ISSUE 1 THE EDUCATION EXPERIENCE

WHAT WE’VE DONE RIGHT: Earning an MBA in a Darden classroom remains unparalleled. The faculty is widely recognized as the best in the world. The School has attracted record numbers of total applicants who demonstrate unprecedented academic excellence, including the best GMAT and GPA in Darden’s history. The number of women enrolled has increased by almost 90 percent since 2015. US News & World Report has ranked Darden the No. 1 U.S. public MBA for average starting salary and bonus every year since 2017.

WHAT’S NEXT: Scholarships, need-based aid and domestic enrollment. “Grounds for Success” matches gifts supporting scholarships, and creates opportunities to also name existing beautiful spaces at Darden. A Darden MBA remains in high demand.

However, the School is not immune to larger trends in business education. Cost of attendance reflecting the ever-increasing cost of funding a world-class graduate business education has climbed dramatically in the past decade (a Full-Time MBA starting this fall has a two-year $250,000 total cost of attendance at Darden), and domestic enrollment at U.S. business schools is declining.

Investments in attracting and retaining top faculty will protect and enhance the student experience. Residential student housing, currently under construction on the Darden Grounds in Charlottesville, will create more opportunities for students while making the experience more connected. Darden must inspire more philanthropic support that will make the School affordable for students. Donors have funded 29 endowed professorships and 92 scholarships during the Powered by Purpose campaign, but the School seeks resources for more as well as for need-based aid, for which Darden has almost no endowment. The School must continue to offer its courses and programs in flexible formats that meet traditional, executive and nontraditional students wherever they choose to pursue their MBAs or other professional certifications.

ISSUE 2

FACULTY & STAFF

WHAT WE’VE DONE RIGHT: Darden today has more faculty members, 99, than ever before. They are competitively compensated and have more options for professional development, meaningful research, online teaching opportunities and joint appointments at UVA than at any time. The School has invested in growing its professional staff and supporting new initiatives in talent development, employee engagement and career development.

WHAT’S NEXT: Competition for the best faculty among top business schools only grows tougher. The School must continue to offer compensation competitively benchmarked to peer institutions, while striving to attract private support that enables more professorships to become endowed.

Faculty Forward, the final milestone of the Powered by Purpose campaign, which concludes 30 June, identifies objectives that, if achieved, will give Darden momentum for the years ahead in its efforts to attract new star faculty and retain current best-in-class instructors. Those objectives are:

a Grow the endowment for faculty excellence

a Secure an endowment for the Institute for Business in Society a Secure sustained funding the Center for Transformational Learning and to transform the Mayo Center for Asset Management into the Institute for Global Capital Markets

The School’s Master Plan includes a significant expansion and renovation of the Faculty Office Building (FOB) that will emphasize collaborative and innovative spaces, warmly welcome students, and provide amenities that support and energize faculty. Thanks to a generous $6.5M gift and additional funding support, Darden has established a 1:1, $7.5 million matching challenge for which Darden seeks further gifts to reach the $15 million cost of the renovations. The Master Plan also includes upgrades to the Research Building and creation of the Batten Global Innovation Nexus. →⃝

ISSUE 3 GLOBAL COMPETITIVENESS

WHAT WE’VE DONE RIGHT: Darden has experienced remarkable growth at its Charlottesville Grounds and in the Washington, D.C., metro area, and it has expanded its brand presence across the world. The School offers Batten Darden Worldwide grants to help students take a global course, and more students are studying abroad than ever before. International applications and enrollment are at all-time highs, and Darden has staff representation in China and India. The School expanded its executive education and lifelong learning offerings through added programs and partnerships and the creation of the Sands Institute for Lifelong Learning. Darden is also recognized as No. 1 among all business schools globally for its sustainability commitments and record.

WHAT’S NEXT: Darden faculty and students must continue to travel abroad regularly for study, recruitment and professional development. Darden seeks to grow its Worldwide Scholarship endowment to support global learning for our Part-Time and Executive MBA students.

The School has a tremendous opportunity and responsibility to pursue its maximum global potential as an institution for lifelong learning. Today, all degree program courses have virtual options, and new virtual portfolios are available for executive education, digital badges and certificates. The School will seek to reach more lifelong learners globally in different modes of delivery and in collaboration with companies. It will continue to grow corporate partnerships, strengthen The Executive Program and enhance its global reach. →⃝

A DECADE AS DEAN

UVA in December reappointed Scott Beardsley, Darden’s ninth dean, to a third term, extending his deanship through 2029, including a year of sabbatical. Since 2015, Beardsley has led the School through a tremendous period of expansion and success, and he expressed a resurgent energy at the opportunity to continue in the leadership role.

“Serving Darden is the greatest professional honor of my life,” he said. “I see my responsibility for the coming years as working with the School community to ensure that Darden remains the world’s preeminent place for education focused on responsible leadership for generations to come.”

Since 2015, Darden has increased financial support for faculty research by 150 percent.

ISSUE 4 RESEARCH & THOUGHT LEADERSHIP

WHAT WE’VE DONE RIGHT: Since 2015, Darden has increased financial support for faculty research by 150 percent. It has added data lab staff, six case writers, full-time researchers, Ph.D. students and grants for special faculty projects. The School also has created an Office of Research Services. Peer-reviewed journal articles have increased dramatically.

The School’s capacity for research and thought leadership has grown with the addition of initiatives focusing on venture capital, private equity, leadership, belonging and community, real estate, and sustainability. The launch of the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business elevates Darden’s and UVA’s capacity to generate practitioner-focused thought leadership.

WHAT’S NEXT: The School must continue to secure resources to attract and retain star faculty who augment and expand Darden’s research capacity and elevate its thought leadership profile at the practitioner level. This effort includes securing funding for additional chairs and endowed professorships, especially the Bruner Fund for Faculty Excellence. Darden must also realize its priority of securing an endowment for the Institute for Business in Society. →⃝

ISSUE 5 FINANCIAL VITALITY

WHAT WE’VE DONE RIGHT: The Powered by Purpose campaign has delivered a more than $600 million impact in the past decade, benefitting every part of the School. With pledges and matching funds, the total endowments and assets supporting Darden have doubled to nearly $1 billion, placing Darden among the top business schools in the world. The Forum Hotel, launched thanks to campaign support, is already generating revenue for strategic priorities and will continue to do so in the decades ahead. Revenue from student enrollment, executive education and hospitality, philanthropy, and publishing and auxiliary businesses has increased 60 percent since 2015.

WHAT’S NEXT: In December, Darden began construction of student housing on Grounds another avenue for enhancing the education experience while generating revenue for future needs, for which it is trying to raise $20 million to name key buildings and gardens. The School must continue to grow the quality and success of the many options for lifelong learning that complement the Full-Time MBA program, including the Part-Time and Executive MBA, the Master of Science in business analytics with the UVA McIntire School of Commerce, in-person and online formats, non-degree programs, and certificate options. The campaign’s final year will focus on garnering support for faculty as well as for student financial aid and scholarships both essential to ensuring Darden’s long-term vitality.

Exploring AI’s Endless Possibilities

BY LAUREN FOSTER

In October 2023, Dave (MBA ’78) and Kathy LaCross announced a record-setting gift of $101 million to Darden and indicated their aspiration to earmark $50 million to establish a Darden-led AI institute that would collaborate with UVA schools and initiatives working in a similar vein. The gift has since been expanded to fund professorships in ethical AI in business, including a University Professorship and a practitioner chair in AI that will allow Darden to build on existing faculty strengths by recruiting additional world-leading faculty and professors of practice.

The total philanthropic impact of the LaCross family’s AI investment at Darden now stands at over $62 million, one of the largest AI-related gifts to any business school in the world.

AI clearly is here to stay. And to Dave LaCross, Darden has a responsibility to help direct its growth. For business students and professionals, LaCross’s advice is clear: embrace AI or risk becoming “roadkill” in that transformation. He’s confident it will solve complex problems and enhance human capabilities across industries. However, he stresses the importance of responsible development.

“It’s absolutely essential, from a career perspective, to be very intellectually curious about this,” he said.

ILLUSTRATION BY DANNY IVAN

The AI Revolution: A Productivity Powerhouse

The game-changer, according to LaCross, came with the 2022 release of ChatGPT 3.5. As one of its first million users in the first week of release, he was instantly captivated.

“It was like honey to a honeybee for me,” he said. “When I used it for the first time, I was quite literally in awe.”

ChatGPT’s ability to handle complex queries and generate coherent, well-crafted responses marked a new era in AI capabilities.

“For noncontroversial subjects — just fact-finding — I couldn’t ask for a better research assistant. It’s so much more efficient than general search, where each link must be examined, vetted, and relevant content painstakingly incorporated into the work,” LaCross said. “I now use up to four different LLMs daily and enjoy comparing and contrasting their results using the same queries.”

The scale of large language models (LLMs) and their evolutionary pace gives a glimpse of the technology’s enormous potential. LaCross notes that ChatGPT 3.5 contained about 175 billion parameters derived from its training data that were constantly being evaluated to predict the next word in a query response. ChatGPT 4.0, released just four months later, contained 1.7 trillion parameters.

The $62 million AI investment at Darden made by Dave LaCross (MBA ’78) and his family is one of the largest AI-related gifts to any business school in the world.

AI Challenges

Even with AI’s tremendous upside, there are plenty of concerns and a growing need to mitigate risks and problems. LaCross said ethical concerns cut across AI’s progression and implementation. This includes privacy issues, bias that is perpetuated when the data informing AI itself reflects biases, sustainability impacts and more. These challenges will evolve and magnify as the technology develops.

When LLMs made their public appearance, critics pointed out that they were guilty of returning inaccurate information, and that

problem, while somewhat reduced over the past couple years, remains. This critique raises another issue with AI: Given the scale of data, how can AI results be audited, explained and validated?

This so-called “black box” challenge is vexing because it’s multidimensional, and it’s now a crucial field of research and practice, LaCross said. “Much has been written regarding the need for functional audits that focus on precisely how AI results were created. Software historically has used computer-generated logs of every coding step taken to validate results. But when considering the soon-to-be trillions of parameters contained in LLMs that are being evaluated to provide the next word, alter an image or create video, providing a detailed audit trail is beyond daunting.”

The effort to validate results and investigate the effects of an AI’s output over time on users and society is part of the AI and ethics discussion.

Another concern: human-generated misinformation and AI’s multiplier effect on the problem. Detecting AI-generated misinformation is a critical challenge, especially as AI becomes more adept at creating persuasive content that manipulates behavior.

LaCross warned that we soon might not be able to trust any audio or visual information on social media. It’s a challenge requiring public education, new systems of verification and better policing by content providers.

“The public needs to know that less and less content can be relied on to be accurate and that a healthy degree of skepticism is warranted,” LaCross said. “This challenge will only increase. As AI technology evolves, it will be harder and harder to spot AI-generated content.”

Yet another challenge of AI’s continued growth is its effect on energy consumption. Here, LaCross identified a sobering list of compounding issues that includes the surging electricity needed to power AI computing hardware and then cool those components, and the expansion of data centers that need enormous amounts of uninterrupted power. AI developers are acutely aware of this issue,

he said, but the general public is far less informed.

“That needs to change, especially as AIs become more integrated and impactful in our daily lives,” LaCross said. “Ongoing efforts to optimize AI models and promote energy-efficient practices will be crucial for a sustainable future. But there remains much uncertainty. As AI continues to evolve, a balance must be struck between technological innovation and environmental sustainability.”

Reshaping Professions and Industries

A self-described “rabbit-hole” person, LaCross’s AI dive has become his deepest and most diverse, given the countless side tunnels. He spends hours reading each day to stay current. He reads books, mainstream AI-focused periodicals and technical websites. LaCross estimates he spends four times as much time today to stay informed as he did in 2022.

For the foreseeable future, LaCross envisions various AIs as “copilots” serving as productivity enhancers for human workers, not total labor replacements. But he acknowledges that “knowledge” professions will likely be impacted far more than was foreseen just five years ago. What makes this probable revolves around one common denominator — the challenge professionals have in keeping up with advances in their field, such as technology, research, legal frameworks and regulation. This leads to one of LaCross’s predictions for the future.

“I believe that LLMs will remain very popular with many users, especially as a search replacement. And LLM data quality will likely improve, but the scale of the effort means vetting data will be expensive and time consuming,” he said. “Given that, the real AI action will involve taking the core LLM technologies and applying them to thousands of much smaller domains with a concentration on accurate training data from the outset. These more focused AIs will offer an up-to-date knowledge base that can be tapped very quickly with relevant and accurate results relating to the information requested.”

The legal field, for example, could see paralegals, usually undertaking manual research for days or weeks, instead feeding AI a particular set

“IT’S ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, FROM A CAREER PERSPECTIVE, TO BE VERY INTELLECTUALLY CURIOUS ABOUT AI.”

— Dave LaCross (MBA ’78)

of facts and then turning it loose for a couple minutes to identify the universe of relevant precedents and propose legal arguments and strategies tailored to the known opinions of whatever judge is hearing the case. Lawyers could then debate the AI to test the soundness of information and strategies.

In medicine, specialists and med students alike will benefit from AI’s ability to absorb the universe of relevant medical literature and provide information that addresses patient-specific data. “Text combined with video of surgical techniques could revolutionize the quality of diagnosis and treatment planning,” LaCross predicted.

Education, particularly early childhood education, is another area where LaCross sees enormous potential, despite some institutional resistance. He imagines AI tutor bots with “infinite patience” that adapt to individual learning styles, working with children at any time of day from a very young age. Images or videos from the bot and verbal responses from students could accelerate vocabulary acquisition and, later, reading comprehension.

“A significant role of any education bot will involve constant evaluations of a student’s performance and reports to teachers, parents and administrators,” LaCross said. “It will measure the student’s individual trajectory on different dimensions and their progress relative to their peers in class and to their peer group nationwide or worldwide.”

He envisions teachers having access to a dashboard covering each student’s performance metrics measured by their respective bots and using that information to prioritize the need for personal interventions when a student goes off track.

“School districts can and should set education bot objectives and capabilities, including training them in skills that encourage student interaction for both recreation as well as education,” he said.

LaCross draws parallels with past technological revolutions, noting that fears of mass unemployment due to innovation have often been overblown. “Historically, the opposite has occurred in almost all cases,” he said.

Still, he acknowledges that AI could lead to workforce reductions in some areas. But he remains optimistic: “The ones who survive and thrive will be those who become ‘query engineers’ able to extract the most productivity improvements from their copilots.”

LaCross believes Darden is perfectly positioned to answer the call for a business school to emphasize critical needs complementary to the technology.

“In fact, I believe that AI is increasingly less of a technology challenge than a leadership opportunity,” he said.

UVA Launches Institute at Darden to Focus on Artificial Intelligence

AI is already a multitrilliondollar business and demands comprehensive solutions.

THE UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA in September announced the establishment of the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business, accelerating UVA’s leading role in shaping AI’s impact on society and business.

The new institute will be based at Darden, enabled by the largest gift in Darden history from alumnus Dave LaCross (MBA ’78) and his wife, Kathy.

The institute’s launch extends and expands the work and mission of Darden’s AI Initiative, with support from Darden’s Institute for Business in Society and Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship, Innovation and Technology, and the Collaboratory for Applied Data Science in Business, launched in partnership with the UVA School of Data Science in 2021.

The LaCross AI Institute will empower UVA to coordinate and magnify its research, pedagogy, teaching and engagement in AI across schools, institutes and research centers.

“Now is the time for institutions like the University of Virginia to convene resources and apply them to shape what likely will be the most impactful technology of our lifetimes,” UVA Provost Ian Baucom said. “Building on the Darden School’s strengths in educating responsible business leaders and thought leadership on the role of business in society, the LaCross AI Institute will continue to accelerate the University’s impact.”

For research institutions such as UVA, there is opportunity — and the accompanying responsibility — to participate in AI’s design, development and deployment by:

Instructing students and practitioners about the strengths and weaknesses of AI

Conducting research on AI’s wide-ranging impacts

Developing AI-related technologies and best practices

Preparing students for AI careers

Convening leaders to analyze and explore AI’s impacts and responsible growth

“AI is already a multitrillion-dollar business and demands comprehensive solutions. Our students are hungry for AI-relevant skills and knowledge, and the LaCross AI Institute can explore the business opportunities of AI across sectors and also define what ethical leadership means in the age of artificial intelligence,” Dean Scott Beardsley said. “Our faculty have worked for decades to infuse ethics into everything we teach and value, and this positions Darden perfectly to set a standard for how ethics must be embedded into the development and integration of AI in business, while also exploring the business of AI itself.”

Beardsley will chair the institute’s advisory council, comprised of numerous UVA school leaders. Darden Professors Yael Grushka-Cockayne and Raj Venkatesan will serve as academic directors of the LaCross AI Institute. Darden is already launching new courses for students in its MBA programs as well as for lifelong learners to equip them with the tools and frameworks to responsibly lead in an age of rapid AI deployment globally.

The LaCross AI Institute promises to place UVA and Darden at the forefront of exploration of ethical approaches that apply to the full spectrum of opportunities and risks that AI presents in business.

Find more information about the LaCross Institute for Ethical Artificial Intelligence in Business at darden.virginia.edu/lacross-ai-institute.

DARDEN’S SOLUTIONS FOR DEVELOPING FUNCTIONAL LEADERSHIP Q A

BY MCGREGOR MCCANCE

IN HIS ROLE as chief client officer and executive director of Darden Executive Education & Lifelong Learning, Devin Bigoness meets frequently with leaders from public and private corporations, military agencies, government entities, nonprofits and trade associations. While different in structure and purpose, all share an interest in improving leadership capabilities at every level.

That interest has helped grow opportunities for schools like Darden to partner with clients on programs tailored to develop leaders in ways that improve not only their immediate skills, but also their ability to understand how decisions and actions fit into and influence what’s happening across the enterprise. The latter is a critical skill known as functional leadership.

Bigoness discusses the increasing emphasis on functional leadership and how Darden can help organizations achieve it.

Q What’s the definition of functional leadership?

As the world moves faster and with more complexity, leaders face pressure to be both technically advanced in their specific area and also able to think and operate at an enterprise level. Functional leadership helps leaders in key functional areas of a company — such as marketing, finance, human resources or operations — improve and develop expertise in that function while also understanding how the pieces fit together in the entire organization.

Q Why are companies interested in introducing these skills deeper into their organizations?

If an organization can develop leaders with strong technical depth as well as the ability to think across the organization, they can operate with greater speed, drive organizational innovation and bring key voices to the table for developing strategies. Functional needs change rapidly, particularly with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, as well as through competitive shifts. Skilled leaders at this level are very valuable.

For some organizational leaders, this is referred to as “T-shaped” learning, where the vertical line exhibits the technical expertise and functional area. The horizontal line of the T is the ability to think broadly across the enterprise. This has strong benefits for the individual leader to increase engagement, retention likelihood and promotion opportunity — both within the function and as a potential senior leader in the organization.

Devin Bigoness, chief client officer and executive director of Darden Executive Education & Lifelong Learning, is an expert in functional leadership, and he is working to help organizations develop this critical capability among their rising leaders.

Q Can you give examples of how Darden Executive Education & Lifelong Learning has partnered with companies?

We have partnered with Capital One and Kraft Heinz on several specific programs for functional leaders.

Kraft Heinz had a pressing need to enhance the decision-making capabilities of leaders in the finance area. The aspiration was to both enhance the financial analysis and strategy area of the function while helping leaders think more deeply about the broader business implications, particularly on a global level. Darden partnered with Kraft Heinz to design a customized financial leadership program that incorporated Darden’s strength in participant-centered learning through case study discussions, simulations and real-world applied learning discussions. The Darden faculty engaged a global group of finance leaders on how to think critically about the financial issues and the leadership possibilities of Kraft Heinz.

We worked with Capital One to develop a technology leadership development program, which had core objectives to grow top talent in the function, enable them as leaders to help drive impact through applied learning, and understand some of the key technology shifts affecting the financial services area while also building business leadership capabilities in emotional intelligence and collaboration. It was critical to enable leaders in the technology area to understand both the needs of today and also the role they play in helping prepare the organization for tomorrow.

We worked with one HR leader who said, “If you can develop leaders that speak fluently the language of engineering and technology as well as the language of business and leadership, those leaders would be worth their weight in gold.” The program with Capital One was an effort to develop those bilingual technology and business leaders.

Q What is Darden’s approach to helping a client build its functional leadership?

Darden has the best business faculty in the world, and the School uses the Socratic method to explore real business problems through case studies. This approach, which is used in our functional leadership programs, requires the learner to both understand and learn from the functional areas of the case and understand that these can be key organizational decisions to

“IF AN ORGANIZATION CAN DEVELOP LEADERS WITH STRONG TECHNICAL DEPTH AS WELL AS THE ABILITY TO THINK ACROSS THE ORGANIZATION, THEY CAN OPERATE WITH GREATER SPEED, DRIVE ORGANIZATIONAL INNOVATION AND BRING KEY VOICES TO THE TABLE FOR DEVELOPING STRATEGIES.”

make. It requires increased strategic and critical thinking. In most of our Executive Education & Lifelong Learning programs, we engage the participants to go deep and go broad in their experiential learning and discussions about the business situation. We customize programs to ensure that the learning is contextualized to the organization’s needs within an individual function and across the organization.  We often work with the heads of the function (CFO, COO, CHRO, CMO) to integrate the learning with projects that enable participants to apply what they’ve learned in real time to generate ideas and solutions for the organization and its challenges. In most of the C-suite discussions we have about these types of programs, the solutions help executive sponsors directly build individual, team, function and business value.

Q How do organizations measure success?

They can measure success by answering questions in some important areas:

→⃝ BUSINESS IMPACT: Was value for the organization created through applied learning and discussions? Are participants able to apply key takeaways and framing to innovate and grow value in the business?

→⃝ LEADERSHIP CAPABILITY: Could participants demonstrate increased leadership capabilities in their functional areas or across the organization?

→⃝ NETWORKING AND COLLABORATION: Could participants build or deepen relationships within the function to work more closely and effectively together?

→⃝ TEAM AND FUNCTION ENGAGEMENT: Is a participant driving engagement and impact as a manager and leader in their team and more broadly in the function?

→⃝ TALENT AND RETENTION: Did overall engagement of the talent in the program grow? Have opportunities for growth in the organization or potential retention rates increased?

For more information about Darden’s functional leadership programs, visit the Executive Education & Lifelong Learning site at darden.virginia.edu/executive-education.

LIVE SPORTS THE FIGHT IS ON TO REPLACE TV

BY SEB MURRAY ILLUSTRATIONS BY JAMIE CULLEN

AFTER YEARS OF FOCUSING ON BINGE-WORTHY SERIES AND BLOCKBUSTER FILMS, STREAMING GIANTS LIKE NETFLIX AND AMAZON AS WELL AS SMALLER UPSTARTS LIKE FUBOTV ARE VYING FOR A PIECE OF THE LIVE SPORTS PIE, A SPACE THAT HAS LONG BEEN THE DOMAIN OF TRADITIONAL MEDIA COMPANIES LIKE FOX, WALT DISNEY’S ESPN AND WARNER BROS. DISCOVERY.

Those three legacy media companies tried to push back with plans to launch a joint sports streaming service called Venu Sports. However, the joint venture was canceled less than a year after it was announced due to legal challenges and Disney’s January deal to buy a controlling interest in FuboTV. The stakes have never been higher — nor the competition fiercer. Who will win out?

WHY STREAMERS ARE SHIFTING

Live sports have a unique power to draw audiences that want to experience the excitement in real-time.

“Live sports remain one of the last strongholds of appointment viewing,” says Professor Anthony Palomba. “This communal experience of cheering, celebrating and sharing in the thrill is mirrored only in a few other contexts.”

Amazon made the first big streamer splash when it struck a deal for Amazon Prime to become the exclusive broadcaster for the National Football League’s (NFL) Thursday Night Football from 2023–2033. Netflix followed suit, upping

“Live

sports are the main attraction for cable providers. By including live sports in their portfolios, the streaming services are competing directly with cable providers.”

— Professor Raj Venkatesan

its game by securing rights to stream a selection of NFL games and paying $5 billion for a 10-year World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) broadcast deal.

For Netflix and Amazon, adding live sports is also a way to deepen relationships with existing subscribers and continue cutting into cable TV’s strengths. Streamers are aiming to be the new one-stop-shop for viewers, who have trended toward “cord-cutting” from cable for years.

“Live sports are the main attraction for cable providers. By including live sports in their portfolios, the streaming services are competing directly with cable providers,” says Professor Raj Venkatesan. “This acquisition of live sports provides the streaming services with a bundle of services that can increase customer usage.”

THE (CABLE) EMPIRE STRIKES BACK

Traditional media companies face the challenge of adapting to this new reality. “Disney and Fox are sitting on slowly melting glaciers. They both know they need to get off of what they are currently sitting on,” Palomba says.

For Disney, this has meant leveraging Disney+ while exploring new areas like gaming. Palomba says Disney’s recently acquired $1.5 billion stake in Fortnite maker Epic Games suggests the legacy media giant understands the importance of interactive content.

Fox, on the other hand, faces a different set of challenges, because it is heavily dependent on its sports and news divisions. “Fox is probably more limited here than Disney, as it gave away its stable of characters, such as X-Men, Deadpool, The Simpsons and Die Hard” when it sold 21st Century Fox to Disney, Palomba explains. To remain competitive, Fox will need to double down on its sports offerings and find ways to engage a younger, more digital-savvy audience.

With cable on a seemingly inexorable decline, the old cable stalwarts are trying an if-you-can’tbeat-’em-join-’em approach with streaming. Fox, ESPN and Warner Bros. Discovery teamed up to create Venu Sports, a streaming service that bundles their collective sports rights — from NFL and National Basketball Association (NBA) to Major League Baseball (MLB and FIFA’s World Cup — in one place. With Venu’s collapse, Disney seems well positioned to push its sports properties to streaming audiences, as the combined FuboTV-Hulu platform boasts more than 6 million subscribers. For Fox and Warner,

“Without a clear identity tied to specific sports or leagues, streaming platforms risk losing viewers to those that can offer a more consistent and straightfor ward experience.”

—Professor Kimberly Whitler

it may be back to the drawing board. Comcast’s NBCUniversal has also begun to shift some of its sports broadcasts from its flagship NBC broadcast channel to its Peacock streaming service. The shifting approaches allow the media giants to keep their traditional sports networks relevant, while also reaching a digital-first audience.

The prolonged legal battle led by FuboTV — before Disney acquired a majority stake — to stop the launch of Venu Sports is a reminder that the fight for sports dominance is not just happening on the field, but in the courtroom as well.

The outcome of this legal skirmish could set a precedent for how traditional media companies and newer streamers handle sports rights in the future.

ADS AND DATA LOOM LARGE

Winning subscribers was the major front in the streaming wars, but the focus is shifting in the fight to replace TV. For streaming platforms, one of the big draws of live sports is the potential for advertising.

“Live sports present different content for advertisers through the streaming services,” many of which now offer ad-supported subscription options, says Professor Kimberly Whitler. “Because fans often want to watch games in real time, it provides advertisers an opportunity to connect with consumers who are often deeply, emotionally engaged with live programming.”

This immediacy makes sports an especially appealing space for brands, whether it’s running ads during a high-stakes game or capitalizing on the massive audience of a Super Bowl broadcast,

watched last year by 123 million people in the United States.

Live sports allow streaming services to use their deep wells of customer data and technology flexibility to better target viewers.

“If they know a consumer watches soccer, they can promote upcoming soccer games, either as ads in other programs the customer is streaming or feature the live sports event on the home page,” says Venkatesan. These data-driven strategies help platforms like Amazon and Netflix keep fans engaged and also offer a more tailored experience, which in turn could keep subscribers around longer.

WILL LIVE SPORTS CROWN NEW KING OF THE RING?

Live sports offer a chance to win over fans who want the thrill of watching a game unfold in real-time, something that on-demand content simply can’t replicate. But the costs of acquiring broadcast rights, along with the frustration some viewers feel about needing multiple subscriptions to access their favorite teams, mean that the path forward isn’t without its challenges.

“To build a brand, each streamer will need to ideally own the rights to some content for some time to establish the link between their brand and the content,” Whitler says. “Without a clear identity tied to specific sports or leagues, streaming platforms risk losing viewers to those that can offer a more consistent and straightforward experience.”

With both tech giants and legacy media companies jostling for position, the future of how viewers watch live sports — and which streaming services profit or perish — hangs in the balance. As the game unfolds, the winners will be those who can offer fans the best seat in the house — and convince them to stick around for the next big game.

HOW CALCULATED RISKS HELPED CREATE A $1 BILLION BUSINESS

BY MCGREGOR MCCANCE

ILLUSTRATIONS BY PETRA SITARU

hen Warren Thompson (MBA ’83) visits new leaders of the restaurants owned by his company, he often asks: Do you describe yourself as a corporate person or an entrepreneur?

“I’m looking for that person who would say they’re more of an entrepreneurial type, meaning they’re going to take calculated risks to move the company ahead,” he said. At a recent gathering of managers, he told the group: “That’s why you’re here today. You’re willing to question the status quo. You’re willing to break the mold and come up with a different or better way to do it, and I don’t want you to lose that.’”

That kind of active, adventurous spirit has served Thompson well and been a theme throughout his life. In a partnership selling produce with his father at age 15, Thompson figured he could get more apples and peaches, faster, from Nelson County, Virginia, orchards to the Tidewater, Virginia, market if he bought a school bus for a bargain price and removed the seats to create storage space. The idea worked.

While managing the airport foodservice business for Marriott in the late 1980s, Thompson led a team that opened the first national brand restaurants like Pizza Hut and Taco Bell in LaGuardia and JFK airports in New York. Today, such restaurants are a staple in most airports.

Thompson Hospitality launched in 1992 with the purchase of more than 30 Big Boy’s restaurants from Marriott, converting them to the Shoney’s brand. When those restaurants failed to grow as planned, Thompson had to act. He accelerated his longrange plan to get into the contract foodservice business. That move paid off, and the contract side of the company became its major source of revenue.

PLANNING FOR SUCCESSION

Fifty years since the produce-selling venture, Thompson, 65, finds himself at the other end of the career journey. The Thompson Hospitality president and board chair is contemplating retirement, succession planning and life after building the company into a $1 billion annual revenue business — the nation’s largest minority-owned foodservice and facilities management company.

“When you start a company, you’ve got more time than money. When you’re getting toward the end of the company, you have more money than you have time,” he said of his current perspective. “I have to make every minute count.”

His current motivation comes, in part, from the fact he and his wife, Danielle, started a family later than most, and he brightens immediately when talking about his 4-year-old daughter, Skylar, whom the couple adopted when she was an infant. Developing a plan for the future of Thompson Hospitality is a little behind the original timeline. The COVID-19 pandemic paused that activity as the company — like so many in hospitality, foodservice and related industries — had to find ways to maneuver when the pandemic decimated the service economy.

Here again, Thompson said lessons from his earliest entrepreneurial experiences provided guidance. That first job with his father wasn’t just about fruit. They also marketed vegetables and raised hogs for a meatpacking plant. The diversified income stream made sense then, and it made sense later, as Thompson Hospitality expanded from its start as a restaurant company to a firm that offers services to multiple sectors and operates restaurants and hotels.

When the pandemic arrived, the strategy provided stability.

“When COVID hit, we didn’t go out

of business like many restaurant companies,” he said. “I learned that at a very early age — not to have everything in one basket.”

Once the economy leveled, Thompson returned his attention to what was next for him and for the company he established 32 years ago.

Succession plans are being developed for key leadership positions, and Thompson expects to transition from his role in the next three to five years.

“I don’t ever see myself totally out of the company but taking a back seat position,” he said.

A FOUNDATION TO BUILD ON

In a lifetime of learning-while-doing, Thompson said his parents, Fred and Ruby Thompson, provided the foundation that enabled his successes.

“I learned early on just watching my parents,” he said.

Both were public school teachers. The family lived in the 1960s and ’70s in what was then a mostly segregated community of Windsor, located near Suffolk, Virginia. Thompson recalled working at a local hardware store where Black employees were not allowed to run a cash register until his mother and her sister confronted the management. “She was gutsy,” he said of his mother.

Fred Thompson Sr. transferred a competitive drive that would stick with the younger Thompson through his career.

“My father was my best friend growing up. He was a math teacher. We played math games, we played sports, but it was competitive,” he said. “I’m very competitive as well. If I get into a business, I want to dominate.”

SHOWING THE BUSINESS VALUE OF DIVERSITY

Thompson’s parents both earned degrees from Virginia State University. That connection — and his interest in encouraging diverse students to pursue college degrees and consider careers in business and entrepreneurship — has motivated Thompson to provide some $4 million annually

in scholarships and financial support to historically black colleges and universities.

Thompson Hospitality prides itself on using certified diverse suppliers on some 30 percent of its purchases. Thompson said his company is deeply committed to being a diverse and inclusive workplace — principles ingrained in him by his life experiences, including seeing the effects of racial discrimination on his parents and during his own career.

Today’s widening societal divisions — including over the value of diversity in business and other settings — troubles Thompson. His response at Thompson Hospitality and with its partners and clients: Show the business value.

“We have never mentioned the words ’diversity program.’ I don’t ever recall having a meeting to say, let’s explore our diversity numbers,” he said. “It’s just a part of our culture. Our business model has always been that we present a better option to the customer. We say to that client, we understand your customer better than anyone else. So we make the business case, not the diversity case, as to why.”

“WHEN WE DECIDE TO CREATE A NEW RESTAURANT OR A NEW MENU, I GET PEOPLE AROUND THE TABLE FROM DIFFERENT BACKGROUNDS, DIFFERENT RACES, DIFFERENT GENDERS. I WANT THEM ALL AT THE TABLE SO I CAN GET THAT PERSPECTIVE. IT’S VERY MUCH LIKE A STUDY GROUP TRYING TO LOOK AT A CASE.”

DARDEN CONNECTIONS AND INFLUENCES

A former member of the Darden School Foundation Board of Trustees and founder of the Dean’s Diversity Advisory Council, Thompson established the Warren M. Thompson Scholarship at Darden, supports the Marietta and Sherwood Frey Scholarship, the Black Business Student Forum and the Darden Annual Fund.

Thompson said he still draws on his Darden student experience, citing enduring case-study lessons from an organizational development class led by Professor Alec Horniman that required students to consider multiple perspectives to solve problems.

“When we decide to create a new restaurant or a new menu, I get people around the table from different backgrounds, different races, different genders. I want them all at the table so I can get that perspective,” Thompson said. “It’s very much like a study group trying to look at a case.”

PASSIONATE PERSONNEL

Even as he plans for next steps, Thompson keeps generating ideas for his company: new training facilities, new hotels, even a launch into convenience stores. New ideas are the lifeblood of his firm, and the reason why he loves hiring managers with entrepreneurial spirit.

However the plans unfold, Thompson knows well what kind of people will keep the momentum going for Thompson Hospitality — those thinking creatively about how to do things differently or better.

“An entrepreneur who’s running his or her business, if they don’t love it or enjoy it or get excited about it, they’re not going to be successful,” he said. “You’ve got to have the passion. You can’t wait to wake up every morning and go do it. Then you’ve got to figure out how to do it better than anybody else.”

ALUMNI Q&A

KELSIE CHAUDOIN (EMBA ’22)

BY LAUREN FOSTER

When Kelsie Chaudoin set off for the University of Virginia as an undergrad, she dreamed of designing buildings as an architect. Today, as the head women’s rowing coach at the University of Southern California, she applies the same mindset to building a different type of structure — a championship team working to compete with the best in the country.

Chaudoin, a former All-American rower at UVA, was associate head coach for the Cavaliers from 2020 until mid-2024. During that time, she helped the team win three ACC titles and became a Double Hoo, graduating from the Darden Executive MBA program in 2022.

The Darden Report caught up with Chaudoin to learn more about how her business school education has shaped her approach to coaching and team management, as well as some of the key lessons she has learned along her journey from walking on to the rowing team as a freshman to coaching full time.

You graduated with a degree in architecture but fell in love with rowing. Was there a moment when you realized you wanted to pursue a different career?

When I came in as a freshman, I was so bad at rowing, but coach Kevin Sauer really invested in me and has been a big part of my journey. Rowing never came easily to me, but I just kept working hard, and eventually the results came. By my senior year, I was team captain. The summer after I graduated, I was invited to national team selection camp and was chosen for the U-23 boat that went to the World Championships. We ended up winning gold. Standing on the podium and hearing the national anthem was the moment when I feel like my path changed. I realized I wanted more of that feeling.

What’s your advice to students who worry about pivoting?

I feel like this is a cliché, but I’ve always felt that if there’s something that you’re passionate about and you have the opportunity to pursue it, why not do it? If you work hard toward something you’re excited about, doors will open for you.

Double Hoo Kelsie Chaudoin (EMBA ’22) recently left Charlottesville after four years as assistant coach of the UVA women’s rowing team to become head coach of the University of Southern California women’s rowing team.

You completed your MBA while coaching at UVA. What are your biggest takeaways from your Darden experience?

There are two main takeaways. The first thing I would say is knowing how to prioritize your time and realizing which things need to be perfect and when good enough is good enough. The second thing is to take calculated risks. Those who take calculated risks over time will ultimately end up being more successful, however you want to define that.

How has your Darden education influenced your approach to coaching and team management?

It has impacted it far more than I thought that it would — from communication to leadership. Darden made me a much better listener, and I think that that’s been a really valuable skill.

Because I had been a student athlete, I didn’t think I needed the soft skills, but I learned a lot about how to communicate effectively. I took Vivian Riefberg’s crisis management class, which looked at all the stakeholders affected when something goes wrong and how you need to roll out communication for those types of situations. It was really helpful having a 360-degree view of everything, not just thinking, “How do I need to support the athletes?” But also, “What administrators do I need to tell? What support staff do I need to bring into this?”

My Darden education also helped me take a long-term view when it comes to budgeting for a team and its equipment and being really mindful of how all the pieces fit with my plan for how I want the team to develop.

I also learned a lot about managing people and keeping everyone engaged. With my staff, I want to make sure that they really feel like there are opportunities for growth, and they’re learning and improving because I want them to stay around for a long time.

Can you share an example of how you apply a business concept or strategy from your Darden education to your coaching methods?

In Yael Grushka-Cockayne’s decision analysis class, we did a case called George’s T-shirts. The premise is that people who take calculated risks over time will be more successful.

I have 50 people on the team and need to figure out which eight belong in the top boat. It’s complicated. One way coaches decide who gets the spots is a method called seat racing. It involves two

“AS

A COACH, I HAVE TO FIGURE OUT WHAT’S BEST FOR THE TEAM, TO PUT THE STUDENTATHLETES IN THE BEST POSITION POSSIBLE. IT’S ABOUT THEM IN THE CONTEXT OF THE ENTIRE TEAM, OR THE ENTIRE ORGANIZATION. THAT’S WHEN YOU GET MORE BUY-IN TO THE HARD WORK THAT THEY’RE BEING ASKED TO DO.”

boats racing side by side, with one rower from each crew swapping seats between races. The goal is to identify the best combinations of rowers who make the boat go the fastest.

If you base decisions on just one seat race, the data isn’t very accurate. You need to figure out a way to run those seat races so that you get more consistent data. Say you run the seat race 10 times and nine out of those 10 times, person A wins, then person A belongs in the boat, even though in the most recent race, person B might have won. The calculated risk in this case is that you’re taking the person who lost the most recent race, even though they won the previous nine, so there’s a 90% chance that they’re going to be the person who makes that boat go the fastest.

Rowing requires physical and mental strength. How do you develop mental resilience in your athletes, and how might this apply to developing resilience in a business team?

My biggest job as a coach is to believe in my athletes more than they believe in themselves, to have higher standards for them than they have for themselves and to get them to do things that they don’t believe that they’re capable of. That starts with trust. They need to know that I have their back and that I want what’s best for them. Having a foundation of trust creates a platform for me to be able to really push them to their limits.

Rowing is considered the ultimate team sport. What strategies do you use to motivate your team?

It depends on the person because what motivates one person isn’t going to be what motivates somebody else. I think the biggest thing is showing up for your teammates every day. As a coach, I focus on being really clear about expectations and why we’re doing what we’re doing, especially if I know it’s something they might not be excited about. It’s also important to be consistent and to use data to inform decisions. That way, the team knows the coach isn’t making flippant decisions. There is data behind it, and they can trust the process and trust the system.

One thing that I tell my team all the time is, “It’s not about you.” This was the biggest shift in my mindset from being an athlete to a coach. As an athlete, it was all about, “Why didn’t I get this seat race? Why don’t I get this shot?” As a coach, I have to figure out what’s best for the team, to put them in the best position possible. It’s about them in the context of the entire team, or the entire organization. That’s when you get more buy-in to the hard work that they’re being asked to do.

Can you discuss how you handle setbacks or failures with your team, and what lessons this might offer for leaders in other fields?

One of the coaches I admire is the late John Wooden. He stressed the process and doing your best. I’ve had crews who have won races by almost 10 seconds and felt they underperformed, and crews who have lost by 2 seconds, and I’ve been so proud of them. A lot of it comes down to performing to your potential and knowing, as a leader, what your crew is capable of and holding them to those expectations.

Discover Darden’s

Apply or nominate your senior leaders for our October 2025 program. Contact TEP Director Allison Stratton (StrattonA@darden.virginia.edu).

Jim Faulconer 434.981.0076 jfaulconer@mcleanfaulconer.com

EDGEMONT

$15,000,000 | MLS 576150 | North Garden, VA Court Nexsen, 646.660.0700

GONE AWAY FARM

$3,450,00 | MLS 658352 | Charlottesville, VA

Jim Faulconer, 434.981.0076 Will Faulconer, 434.987.9455

$2,235,000 | MLS 657960 | Ivy, VA

Jim Faulconer, 434.981.0076

Will Faulconer, 434.987.9455

BENTIVAR MANOR

$4,875,000 | MLS 652353 | Charlottesville, VA Jim Faulconer, 434.981.0076 Will Faulconer, 434.987.9455

SPOTTSWOOD

$2,900,000 | MLS 658170 | Charlottesville, VA Charlotte Dammann, 434.981.1250

CEDAR RIDGE

$1,950,000 | MLS 658780 | Esmont, VA Court Nexsen, 646.660.0700 Katherine Leddington, 646.593.0333

NORTHFIELDS

$2,399,000 | MLS 659475 | Charlottesville, VA Katherine Leddington, 646.593.0333

HISTORIC STAUNTON

$1,195,000 | MLS 653080 | Staunton, VA Court Nexsen, 646.660.0700

Jim Faulconer

434.981.0076

jfaulconer@mcleanfaulconer.com

COBHAM PARK

$8,500,000 | Keswick, VA Court Nexsen, 646.660.0700

$3,500,000 | Afton, VA

Tim Michel, 434.960.1124

Jim Faulconer, 434.981.0076

court@mcleanfaulconer.com

OLD KESWICK

Keswick, VA

Charlotte Dammann, 434.981.1250

Extraordinary estate with 547+/- acres including a circa 1745 & 1832 residence, numerous dependencies and stables provide a unique, private domain in a premier location near Charlottesville and the University of Virginia.

FARMINGTON

$5,795,000 | Charlottesville, VA

Tim Michel, 434.960.1124

Court Nexsen, 646.660.0700

BALBION DR

$2,460,000 | Earlysville, VA

Jim Faulconer, 434.981.0076 & Will Faulconer, 434.987.9455

SWANNANOA GOLF

BILL BLUE (MBA ’86)

Rethinking Mental Health Care

BY SALLY PARKER

W

illiam F. “Bill” Blue Jr. (MBA ’86) believes all people who need mental health care should be able to find help quickly at any level of care — from crisis intervention to ongoing support — just as they can for physical health.

Eleven years ago, after a mental health crisis in his family involving long delays in diagnosis and treatment, Blue left a 28-year career in investment banking to find a solution.

“It affected us so profoundly. When you are going through it, when you’re worried about treatment, it really impacts everything you do,” he says. “The real fuel for my career change was the injustice of the treatment situation and the inability to access quality care.”

Blue, who retired as vice chairman of investment banking and capital markets at Wells Fargo Securities, and his wife, Betsy, planted the seed for the HopeWay Foundation, a nonprofit mental health treatment community for children and adults in Charlotte, North Carolina. Blue was board chair for the first 10 years and recently joined Betsy as an emeritus director.

HopeWay provides a continuum of care, so no matter what individuals are going through, vulnerable clients can skip the long wait for appointments. And they don’t have to experience the pain of repeating their story over and over in search of new providers.

Services include several levels of support: residential; partial hospitalization day treatment and intensive outpatient day treatment, with personal and group therapy and integrative activities like art, music, yoga, gardening and cooking; outpatient once weekly or monthly; and support groups.

Blue was energized from the start to bring evidence-based, holistic mental health care to Charlotte, but launching a health care nonprofit was daunting — forming a board; conducting a feasibility study; fundraising; finding and building a site and high-quality

“

THE REAL FUEL FOR MY CAREER CHANGE WAS THE INJUSTICE OF THE TREATMENT SITUATION AND THE INABILITY TO ACCESS QUALITY CARE.

staff; and becoming accredited, licensed and in network. But when Blue took his pitchbook to sitdowns with potential supporters, ready to make a case, community support came fast and strong.

“The people we would call on would just push the book away and say, ’Let me tell you about the story in our family.’ The community response was overwhelming. That’s how HopeWay got rolling.”

The board raised $27 million — far surpassing the $10 million goal. HopeWay initially relied on community outreach and word of mouth. The first couple of clients arrived on opening day, Thanksgiving 2016, but a trickle soon turned into a steady stream.

Over eight years and 8,000 admissions, HopeWay has served more than 4,000 clients from 40 states and four foreign countries. Last year, it opened a new facility to address the urgent needs of children under 18. Together, the two campuses employ 160, including full-time psychiatrists, licensed clinical therapists and nurses.

Blue says launching HopeWay was possible in part due to skills he learned at Darden and advanced in investment banking, such as presentation, capital raising and budgeting, team building, and marketing.

He’s ready to share lessons learned with like-minded communities. “Darden always asked: ‘What are your values?’” he says. “I’d love to pay it forward. We have a playbook, and I’d be more than happy to talk to any Darden alum who is inspired to try and do something like this in their community.”

Curators of the Unique

Mount Sharon

The Upper Farm

The Big Lonely

108 Tally Ho

C

L

1 3 8 2 G a r t h R d

C h a r l o t t e s v i l l e , V i r g i n i a

L i s t p r i c e $ 3 , 9 5 0 , 0 0 0

S O L D

A n n H a y H a r d y 2 0 2 2 9 7 0 2 2 8

3 O l d M i l l R d

W a r m S p r i n g s , V i r g i n i a

L

Y

LISA BOBB-SEMPLE (MBA ’02)

Putting Her Stamp on Leadership

BY CAROLINE MACKEY

Picking a favorite stamp is like picking a favorite child, you can’t do that,” says Darden alumna Lisa Bobb-Semple (MBA ’02) She would know better than anyone.

Bobb-Semple, a veteran of the U.S. Postal Service for nearly 20 years, was recently appointed as USPS Director of Stamp Services. Her story is not only about stamps, but also a shared vision for connecting generations, preserving history and celebrating culture.

Her new role focuses on everything related to stamps, including determining the stamp subject, stamp design, fulfillment and distribution, inventory management and more.

“Believe it or not, because of the rigorous vetting process, it can take several years from beginning to end for a stamp to be released,” she says.

While she won’t name a favorite stamp, she was willing to single out the USPS’ Dungeons & Dragons stamp as a huge hit that engaged younger generations less familiar with mailing letters. “I love the more creative stamps, but it’s always amazing to me the story behind each stamp that we develop.”

She says her Darden experience influenced her career choices and leadership style.

“Before joining Darden, I was in the consulting field, but I really wanted to get into marketing. I took some great marketing courses at Darden, which inspired me to pursue what I am doing today,” she says. “When I think about my time at Darden and my leadership style today, it’s very much about the people you

“

WHEN I THINK ABOUT MY TIME AT DARDEN AND MY LEADERSHIP STYLE TODAY, IT’S VERY MUCH ABOUT THE PEOPLE YOU SURROUND YOURSELF WITH, INSPIRING THEM AND BECOMING INSPIRED.

surround yourself with, inspiring them and becoming inspired, as well as loving what you do, which was modeled for me at Darden.”

Bobb-Semple named Professor Martin Davidson, who taught her Organizational Behavior classes, as a particularly strong faculty influence, but emphasizes that she loved all her professors at Darden.

“At Darden, you are often taught the hard skills, but the the touchy-feely skills are just as important — sometimes even more so.

Martin made me realize the importance of those skills and that has influenced how I try to lead — with people first,” she says. “That is probably one of the greatest things about Darden: the professors and how much they truly care for the students and their work. The teaching methodology is also amazing — teaching through the case study method, while getting the lessons across and keeping it fun and engaging.”

Her position as director of stamp services came with one unexpected side benefit that also links back to her time at Darden and the tightknit community.

“It’s been great for me to see many Darden alums comment on my LinkedIn page about their love of stamps!”

EVAN INRA (EMBA ’08)

Career Coach Lives His Own Advice

BY SALLY PARKER

For Evan Inra (EMBA ’08), life and career have been marked by a desire to pivot and explore new challenges as exciting opportunities arise — and to embrace change.

He earned a bachelor’s degree in aerospace engineering and had three internships at Lockheed Martin, but soon the industry laid off thousands and the factory where he worked was closed. This was the moment he decided to refocus his career on combining business and technology in management consulting.

Now Inra, a senior HR leader at Amazon Web Services, shares this story with his two college-age children and with the Darden alumni he serves as a Darden Alumni Career Services (ACS) coach.

“I like to use my story, especially, for people who feel stuck,” he says. “It’s never too late. It’s never too late to make a pivot or decide to do something new.”

Inra says he has felt that way a couple of times in his career. What pointed him in a new direction was becoming aware of skills he could transfer easily into other industries and roles.

Inra worked for more than 20 years in management consulting for PwC (where he met his wife, Laura), IBM and EY. He liked being at the intersection of technology, business and people, but after the first decade, he started to feel like he needed more tools in his leadership toolkit. With two young children, full-time graduate school wasn’t practical. But when Laura showed him a flier for Darden’s Executive MBA, set to launch its inaugural year, he said to himself, “This is it.”

“

IT’S NEVER TOO LATE TO MAKE A PIVOT OR DECIDE TO DO SOMETHING NEW.

The program offered the 53 students immersive breaks from home and work routines. A cohort trip to China punctured Western assumptions as they met businesspeople and students there. Camping on the Great Wall, under a crescent moon and stars with his cohort, is one of Inra’s favorite Darden memories.

“We were proud to be the pioneers to launch this new format. It was, without a doubt, the best decision I ever made in my career.”

Inra continued consulting after earning his MBA, and he grew interested in HR. He didn’t know how to make the change, so he worked with ACS on a strategy to make this latest leap.

He landed a job with AWS HR, where his unique background was a plus. Inra supports AWS teams with a national security mission, helping retain employees and managers grow new skills. He finds meaning in being part of a team that helps keep us all safe. He has also served on the Darden Alumni Board since 2018.

“If I’ve learned nothing else in the last five years, life is way too short to be bored, to not be engaged, and to not be doing things that are meaningful and impactful,” Inra says. “It’s OK to be open to new experiences. Be open to that pivot, no matter what stage of your life or your career you’re in. You won’t regret it.”

DARDEN LEADERSHIP BOARDS

The two leadership boards of the Darden School of Business are composed of nearly 100 distinguished leaders who serve as an innovative force in the advancement of the Darden School throughout the world.

(as of 31 December 2024)

Thank you to our alumni and volunteer leaders for a record year of support for Darden.

DARDEN SCHOOL FOUNDATION BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Chair

Frank M. Sands (MBA ’94) Sands Capital

Vice Chair

John D. Fowler Jr. (MBA/JD ’84) Baycrest Capital LLC

Immediate Past Chair

Martina Hund-Mejean (MBA ’88) Retired, Mastercard International Inc.

Scott C. Beardsley University of Virginia Darden School of Business

John P. Bolduc (MBA ’90) H.I.G. Capital

H. William Coogan Jr. (MBA ’82) Retired, Firstmark Corp.

James A. Cooper (MBA ’84) Thompson Street Capital Partners

Guillaume M. Cuvelier (MBA ’91) Davos Brands LLC

Robert G. Doumar Jr. (MBA/JD ’88) Park Square Capital LLP

Debra Draughan (MBA ’84) The Process Management Group LLC

Frank S. Edmonds (MBA/JD ’95) Panning Capital Management

Arnold B. Evans (MBA/JD ’97) JP Morgan Chase & Co.

Richard B. Evans University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Catherine J. Friedman (MBA ’86) GV

Kirsti W. Goodwin (MBA ’02) Tower3 Investments

Peter M. Grant II (MBA ’86) Anchormarck Holdings LLC

Owen D. Griffin Jr. (MBA ’99) Currie Medical

Yael Grushka-Cockayne University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Constance J. Hallquist (MBA ’91) Garnet Hill

Michelle B. Horn (MBA ’95) Delta Air Lines

Robert J. Hugin (MBA ’85) Retired, Celgene Corp.

Mark J. Kington (MBA ’88) Kington Management LLC

David M. LaCross (MBA ’78) Morgan Territory Brewing

Beverly B. Ladley (MBA ’92) Consultant

Douglas R. Lebda (EMBA ’14) LendingTree Inc.

Lemuel E. Lewis (MBA ’72) Iv Media LLC

Nicole M. Lindsay (MBA/JD ’99) Mastercard International Inc.

Amanda Lozano (MBA ’09) North Fork Partners LLC

Paul Mahoney University of Virginia School of Law

Richard A. Mayo (MBA ’68) Game Creek Capital

Donald E. Morel Jr. (TEP ’97) Progenitor Capital LLC

Kim B. Morrish (MBA ’93) Canterbury Partners

Adair B. Newhall (MBA ’09) StepStone Group

Diem H.D. Nguyen (MBA ’01) SIGA

G. Ruffner Page Jr. (MBA ’86) O’Neal Industries LLC

William H. Payne II (GEMBA ’22) Coalfield Strategies

Carl Peoples (MBA ’94) Goldmach Sachs Group Inc.

C. Evans Poston Jr. (EMBA ’17) Hunton Andrews Kurth LLP

Matthew Joseph Reintjes (MBA ’04) YETI

James E. Ryan University of Virginia

Michael Sabel Venture Global LNG

Erik A. Slingerland (MBA ’84) EAS International S.A.

Robert W. Smith (MBA ’87) Retired, T. Rowe Price Trust Co.

Shannon G. Smith (MBA ’90) Abundant Power Group

Susan Sobbott (MBA ’90) Independent Consultant

Cynthia K. Soledad (MBA ’02) Egon Zehnder

Anand Emmanuel Stanley (MBA ’03) Airbus

Mark J. Styslinger Altec Industries Inc.

Bruce R. Thompson (MBA ’90) Bank of America

Lilo Simmons Ukrop (MBA ’89) University of Virginia Darden School of Business

Edward W. Valentine (MBA ’93) Harris Williams & Company

Steven C. Voorhees (MBA ’80)

Marietta Edmunds Zakas (MBA/JD ’84) Mueller Water Products Inc.

DARDEN ALUMNI ASSOCIATION BOARD OF DIRECTORS

Chair

Michelle B. Horn (MBA ’95) Delta Air Lines

Vice Chair

Cynthia K. Soledad (MBA ’02) Egon Zehnder

Rachel Barnes (MBA ’21) Royer Cooper Cohen Braunfeld LLC

Jennifer Briggs (MBA ’14) Pfizer, Inc.

Stephen (Gregg) Brooks (MBA ’09) Self employed

Mary Buckle Searle (MBA ’86)

Jordan H. Casserley (MBA ’20) McKinsey & Company

Sandhya K. Chhabra MD (EMBA ’17) Albemarle Endocrinology

Sean M. Corrigan (MBA ’05) The Walt Disney Company

Richard P. Dahling (MBA ’87) Fiducient Advisors

Zhana Edmonds (MBA ’19) CVS Health

Richard C. Edmunds III (MBA ’92) PricewaterhouseCoopers

Rachel M. Edwards (MBA ’22)

Sarita T. Finnie (MBA ’01) Bayer

Theresa O. Frankiewicz (MBA ’87) Crown Community Development

James Freedman Aponte (MBA ’10) Meta

Michael J. Ganey (MBA ’78) GaneyNPD

Leslie P. Gordon (MBA ’89) Korn Ferry

Betsy Gorton (MBA ’04) Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.

Jacqueline Grace (MBA ’10)

Taylor P. Heaps (MBA ’13) Robert W. Baird

Karen O. Henneberger (EMBA ’20) 7 Rules Consulting LLC

Sonia L. Hounsell (MBA ’99) FunkkOFF! Inc.

Evan Inra (EMBA ’08) Amazon

Gen A. Izutsu (MBA ’15) Veralto

Marcien B. Jenckes (MBA ’98) Comcast Corporation

Melissa Jenkins (MBA ’16) Washington Nationals

Kendall Jennings (MBA ’12) Accenture

Claritza E. Jimenez (EMBA ’21) Paramount/CBS News

Wei Jin (MBA ’99) Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Company

Patrice Ju (MBA ’14) Google

Matthew A. Kaness (MBA ’02) GoodwillFinds Ecommerce Inc.

Markus A. Kritzler (MBA ’04) Ingenia Capital

Xiang Liu (MBA ’05)

Jared Love (MBA ’07) NBCUniversal

Kristina F. Mangelsdorf (MBA ’94) KFM Executive Coaching (self-employed)

Sherry McCray (MBA ’05) Constellation

Lois M. McEntyre (MBA ’95) Intuit Inc.

Harold W. McGraw IV (MBA ’07) S&P Global

Rajan J. Mehra (MBA ’93) March Capital

Michael W. Meredith (GEMBA ’17) Akamai

Tami M. Moore (EMBA ’09) Tillman Fiber Co.

Tiffani C. Moore (EMBA ’16) Federal Housing Finance Agency

Betsy M. Moszeter (EMBA ’11) Green Alpha Investments

Nikhil Nath (MBA ’00) InterGlobe Enterprises

Ann H. S. Nicholson (MBA ’01) Corning Inc.

Chetan Peddada (MBA ’15) RJA Technologies

Alyssa N. Perez-Melendez (MBA ’20) Bain & Company

Alex R. Picou (MBA ’89) JP Morgan Private Bank

Jason Sinnarajah (MBA ’07) Kansas City Royals

Malcom Stewart (MBA ’24) Brown Advisory

David L. Tayman (MBA/JD ’99) Tayman Lane Chaverri LLP

Kelly M. Thomson (MBA ’99) Mubadala Capital

Zachary G. Upcheshaw (MBA ’15) Goldman Sachs Group Inc.

Gerrud Wallaert (TEP ’18) Brightmark

Meghan Welch (EMBA ’10) Plaid

Carter Whitelow (EMBA ’24) Williams Mullen

Daniele M. Wilson (MBA ’11) Google

Rebecca M. Wilson (MBA ’96) 20/20 Foresight Executive Search

Jose Maria Zertuche (MBA ’00) BlackRock

The Darden School offers its condolences to the families of the following individuals whose deaths have been reported to us in the past six months.

Jeffrey P. Anderson (MBA ’85)

Richard M. Berkeley (MBA/JD ’80)

Gerard H. Bogan (TEP ’84)

Earl C. Cox Jr. (MBA ’83)

John Dabney Carr Jr. (MBA ’77)

Percy W. Echols (MBA ’74)

Hartwell H. Gary III (MBA ’65)

H. Hamilton Hackney Jr. (MBA ’58)

Bryan F. Helm (MBA ’77)

Lorin S. Knell (MBA ’01)

Dominic J. Miccolis (TEP ’87)

Ralph A. Millar (MBA ’61)

Michael D. Modeen (MBA ’76)

John J. Nolan (MBA/JD ’75)

James R. Peters (MBA ’60)

Laurence C. Pettit Jr. (DBA ’72)

Nishal L. Sodha (GEMBA ’17)

Frank A. Stangl (TEP ’86)

William R. Van Luven (TEP ’79)

Allen B. Venner (MBA ’60)

Raymond B. Woolson III (MBA ’85)

John D. Wright Jr. (MBA ’59)

The Charles C. Abbott Award is named in honor of the first dean of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business. The award is presented annually to a graduate of the Darden School or The Executive Program whose contributions of time, energy and talent are outstanding. The Alumni Association recognizes the recipient as an individual who:

Demonstrates a strong level of interest in and concern for Darden’s mission

Commits a generous amount of time, energy and funds to Darden

Brings initiative and persistence to projects and responsibilities Is regarded by other stakeholders as an outstanding contributor

Please nominate a fellow alumna or alumnus at alumni.darden.edu/ abbottnomination.

You will be asked to provide the nominee’s name and an explanation of why you identify this person as a strong candidate for the award. The Abbott Award will be presented to the recipient during Darden Reunion Weekend. Please direct questions to the Office of Advancement at +1-434243-8977 or alumni@ darden.virginia.edu.

Change Service Requested

“IT’S ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL, FROM A CAREER PERSPECTIVE, TO BE VERY INTELLECTUALLY CURIOUS ABOUT AI.”