Rich Lyons, current chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer at UC Berkeley, will become the university’s next chancellor on July 1.
Rich Lyons, chief innovation and entrepreneurship officer at the University of California (UC) Berkeley, has been selected as the institution’s next chancellor. He will take on his new responsibilities on July 1.
Lyons has served in his current role since January 2020, having previously been dean of the Haas School of Business from 2008. His promotion to chancellor was made through a unanimous vote by the UC Board of Regents.
He will be the 12th chancellor, succeeding Carol Christ, and the first alumnus of UC Berkeley to lead the university since 1930, having obtained a bachelor’s degree in business and finance in 1982. He gained a PhD in economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 and joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1993.
Listen to the Beyond the Breakthrough episode with Rich Lyons
He spent two years from 2006 to 2008 as chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs, and previously told Global University Venturing that this is where he learned how to be intentional about culture.
The full interview is available on the Beyond the Breakthrough podcast, where Lyons talks about how he has built an entrepreneurial culture on campus that everyone wants to participate in, rather than forcing people to sign up, and how that has changed the university.
He plans to bring those learnings to his new role, he explained in a statement from the university last week: “If I’m obsessive about anything. I’m obsessive about how leaders work with their people to strengthen culture.”
Thierry Heles
Thierry Heles is editor-at-large of Global University Venturing and Global Corporate Venturing, and host of the Beyond the Breakthrough podcast.
