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DB|BD at Aspen: Dean Erika James Says a Prepared Leader is a Disciplined One
Description
Erika James became the dean of the Wharton School on July 1, 2020. So she knows a thing or two about leading during a crisis.
She even wrote a book about it. Dean James, and her co-author Lynn Perry Wooten, published The Prepared Leader in the fall of 2022. The book breaks down the phases of crisis management and lends some advice on how to make big decisions under pressure.
In this conversation with DB|BD host Ellen McGirt, Dean James explains why leading in a crisis-filled world requires discipline. She also details the decisions Wharton is making to prepare its students and her faculty to succeed in an unstable economy that is increasingly reliant on AI. They also chat about the state of DEI and Dean James’ ambivalent thoughts on being the first Black person to serve as Wharton’s dean.
On this season of DB|BD, we are thinking about radical collaboration. Host Ellen McGirt sat down with visionary designers, leaders and thinkers at the 2026 Aspen Business & Society Summit to ask them about the radical act of collaborating with others in a time when it often feels impossible to find common ground.
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