Alison Davis-Blake

Alison Davis-Blake majored in Economics at Brigham Young University during the 1970′s.  At the time there were very few women in the program, and she was considered a pioneer.  After graduation, she worked for a time in New York, and then returned to BYU to earn a Master’s Degree in Organizational Behavior.  She then earned a Ph.D. at Stanford.

Davis-Blake taught for several years at Carnegie Mellon University, before going to the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas, where she served as department chair and later as an associate dean.  She was the first woman asked to lead the Carlson School of Management at the University of Minnesota in July 2006, and at the time was the highest-ranking female U.S. business school dean.  Now, as the  first female dean at the prestigious University of Michigan Ross School of Business, Davis-Blake has continued to set an example and defy stereotypes.

In addition to being a widely-cited professor and capable leader, Davis-Blake is a wife and mother to two boys, one a freshman at Stanford, and the younger one a sophomore in high school.  Career-oriented women always struggle to find a balance between career and family life.  Society, including the Mormon sub-culture, tries to make successful people conform to usual social structures.  But Davis-Blake has said that finding balance within her own family has been a difficult and intensely personal decision.  These decisions must vary from person to person and family to family and be made with spiritual guidance.  Mormon women continue to contribute to the workplace and to their communities, even while making family life, and especially faith in Christ the center of their lives.

“A lot of people have opinions about what balance looks like,” she said. “And balance, in my view, is lived within the privacy of one’s own home and one’s relationships. What you experience as balance, might not look like balance to another person. You must define with your husband and your children what is balance for your family and live it, and not get too worked up about people who don’t think your life is as they would like it to be.” [1]

Davis-Blake grew up in a family of professionals.  Her father was a professor for 44 years at the Carlson School of Management, and her mother was a psychologist in private practice.  As a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Davis-Blake finds balance through being centered on the Savior.