About me
Scott C. Beardsley is ninth dean of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, and a chaired professor in Strategy, Ethics and Entrepreneurship. A global innovator, builder, strategist and talent developer, he has extensively worked with CEOs, boards, and top teams of complex organizations around the world to anticipate, navigate and thrive in the face of technology and strategic discontinuity.
At UVA Darden since 2015, he has helped raise a record $570+ million in philanthropic support-including multiple eight and nine figure gifts-bringing endowment assets to above $1B; achieved record MBA rankings; and led ─ from vision to completion ─ the opening of UVA Darden DC Metro, a Washington, D.C-area campus enabling new EMBA, MSBA and Part-Time MBA offerings and a $150 million Darden hotel and conference center, adjacent arboretum and botanical gardens and alumni hall.
Until 2015, he was a senior partner and elected global board member at McKinsey & Co. where he was among the fastest ever to rise to senior partner and held some of the firm’s most senior roles. One of McKinsey’s most prolific, global thought leaders in TMT, Beardsley also wrote about the rise of nontraditional leaders in academia in his 2017 book, Higher Calling (UVA Press). An expert in strategy, stakeholder management, regulation, and leadership development, he now researches and teaches on maximizing human potential; CEO leadership; technology and AI regulation. He is currently pursuing research on AI ethics toward a Master in Practical Ethics (part-time) in the Department of Philosophy at University of Oxford’s Pembroke College.
He resides in Charlottesville on the Lawn at UVA’s Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He and his wife Claire Dufournet of Annecy, France, have three sons and a golden retriever Lawnie.
