Getting to know Dean De Cremer

Hi, my name is david de kremer and I'm the dunton family dean of the moore mckim school of business. What I was most interested in when I was reflecting on taking the position as dean was really three things. The first one was humanics, the concept that our president Joseph Aoun launched and really resonated with me because my research is in the field of what I like to call stempathy, STEM and empathy together. So it's really about the hard and the soft skills and how that interplay between those two types of skills will determine our future of work, but also how we educate our students towards the future. The second thing is that Northeastern University is truly an international community. When you walk on campus, you see so many students from different countries all working together, collaborating, getting to know each other's culture. When they go out on co ops, when they visit different countries, they are really cross cultural. And that really resonated with me as someone who lived and worked on four continents as well and speaks multiple languages. And thirdly is the huge potential that the more McKim School of Business has. We haven't scratched the surface yet, I would say. And that's why I'm also working hard in my first three, four months on trying to find that identity of the Moore McKim School of Business. So what is it that the Mormon Kim School of Business is about? What makes it so special? Working on that identity and allowing that identity to guide us towards the future. And I think that's going to bring all that potential to the surface. What makes me tick is a variety of things. First of all, I'm a scholar at heart, so I like to ask questions and try to pursue responses to those questions, answers, do research, talk to people. And this is something that I see as crucial to my leadership as dean as well. You have to ask questions, you're in charge, leading a business school. So that means you need to know what matters to that school, what matters to the stakeholders, how do they see it? So you ask questions and you listen at the same time. That's something that I love doing as a scholar, but also as a leader. Another thing that really drives me is the future of work, really understanding what kind of society, what kind of organization, what of kind going to be working in in the future. How do we deal with technology, how do we deal with the situation? When the people say artificial intelligence is going to take over everything, everything will change. That's quite a heavy message for a lot of people. They have uncertainties about their job, they have uncertainties about the future. And I see again, as a business school dean, it's also our job to try to prepare people there. So that's why I always say in our education, technology is the conduit and we're in the business of training students. There are skills to deal with that technology. So basically, how can we use technology to create business value in responsible ways? So that requires that we think across disciplines that we understand technology, that we understand business, and that we understand what the concerns are in society and its multiple stakeholders. So that's something that I'm really, really passionate about. Well, I think our college and especially so our students can have a major impact on the job they do. Society we live in basically on the future because they have something what I like to call smart grid. They're trained well, academically speaking, but we have experiential education. They go and see different countries, they explore different cultures. They understand for that reason that there are always different stakeholders involved in any decision you take. So that means every decision you make as a business leader has an impact and you need to make sure that's a responsible impact. So bringing that pragmatism together with theoretical knowledge and at the same time, your experience, that's something that I think really defines our students and that's something we will need in the future. We can't just leave everything to an intelligent machine who basically works with the data of our past. No, we're creating a new future and we will need those skills that Exactly. I think the Mormon Kim School of Business students have. So I've been in the job for almost six months now and I must say that I'm really enjoying it. I feel at ease. I feel that the community has accepted me. I feel that I'm part of the community and I'm really happy that people seem to recognize all the hard work we've put in already the last few months in trying to come up with a Dean's roadmap identifying what is DMSB about. So what I hope today is that with the Dean's roadmap, with our clear mission of educating our students to be responsible business leaders of the world who can create, navigate in the digital world, that we can actually be more proactive and say, like this is our mission and our vision is our students learn across borders to lead with impact. It can direct us also to tell the university within the ecosystem that you've shaped here, which is amazing by the way. This is what we want to do. We own our business school narrative and we own our identity now. And I really hope that this is something that will resonate with our faculty, our staff, but also beyond towards every stakeholder that we have, our students, our alums. And I look forward to working together with all of you, collaborating on the many projects and initiatives that we have in mind and make sure that the identity that we are confident about at the Moore McKim School of Business is will be known to the world.