Richard Locke PhD ’89 named dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management

Richard Locke PhD ’89, a prominent scholar and academic administrator with a wide range of leadership experience, has been named the new dean of the MIT Sloan School of Management. The appointment is effective July 1.

In becoming the school’s 10th dean, Locke is rejoining the Institute, where he previously served in multiple roles from 1988 to 2013, as a faculty member, a department head, and a deputy dean of MIT Sloan. After leaving MIT, Locke was a senior leader at Brown University, including seven and a half years as Brown’s provost. Since early 2023, he has been dean of Apple University, an educational unit within Apple Inc. focused on educating the company’s employees on leadership, management, and the company’s culture and organization.

“I am thrilled to be returning to MIT Sloan,” says Locke, whose formal title will be the John C Head III Dean at MIT Sloan. “It is a special place, with its world-class faculty, innovative research and educational programs, and close-knit community, all within the MIT ecosystem.”

He adds: “All of these assets give MIT Sloan an opportunity to chart the future — to shape how new technologies will reconfigure industries and careers, how new enterprises will be created and run, how individuals will work and live, and how national economies will develop and adapt. It will be exciting and fun to work with great colleagues and to help lead the school to its next phase of global prominence and impact.”

As dean at MIT Sloan, Locke follows David C. Schmittlein, who stepped down in February 2024 after a nearly 17-year tenure. Georgia Perakis, the William F. Pounds Professor of Operations Research and Statistics and Operations Management at MIT Sloan, has been serving as the interim John C Head III Dean since then and will continue in the role until Locke begins.

Institute leaders welcomed Locke back, citing his desire to help MIT Sloan address significant global challenges, including climate change, the role of artificial intelligence in society, and new health care solutions, while refining best practices for businesses and workplaces.

“MIT Sloan has been very fortunate in its leaders. Both Dave Schmittlein and Georgia Perakis set a high bar, and we continue that tradition with the selection of Rick Locke,” says MIT President Sally A. Kornbluth. “Beyond his wide-ranging experience and accomplishments and superb academic credentials, I have come to know Rick as an outstanding leader, both from the years when we were both provosts and through his thoughtful service on the MIT Corporation. Rick has always impressed me with his intellectual breadth, personal grace, and fresh ideas. We’re delighted that he will be rejoining our campus community.”

In a letter to the MIT community, MIT Provost Cynthia Barnhart praised Locke’s “transformative career” and noted how she and the search committee agree “that Rick’s depth of experience makes him a once-in-a-generation leader who will ‘hit the ground sprinting’” as MIT Sloan’s next dean.

Barnhart added: “The committee and I were impressed by his vision for removing frictions that slow research efforts, his exceptional track record of raising substantial funds to support academic communities, and his strong grasp of and attentiveness to the interests and needs of MIT Sloan’s constituencies.”

A political scientist by training, Locke has conducted high-profile research on labor practices in global supply chains, among other topics. His career has also included efforts to bring together stakeholders, from multinational firms to supply-chain workers, in an effort to upgrade best practices in business.

Locke is widely known for a vigorous work ethic, a humane manner around co-workers, and a leadership outlook that blends idealism about civic engagement with realism about global challenges.

His wide-ranging work and interests make Locke well-suited to MIT Sloan. The school has about 115 tenure-track faculty and 1,600 students spread over eight degree programs, with wide-ranging initiatives and academic groups connecting core management topics with more specialized topics relating to the innovation economy and entrepreneurship, the social impact of business and technology, policy development, and much more.

MIT conducted an extensive search process for the position, evaluating internal and external candidates over the last several months. The search committee’s co-chairs were Kate Kellogg, the David J. McGrath jr (1959) Professor of Management and Innovation at MIT Sloan; and Andrew W. Lo, the Charles E. and Susan T. Harris Professor at MIT Sloan.

The committee solicited and received extensive feedback about the position and the school from  stakeholders including faculty, students, staff, and alumni, while engaging with MIT leadership about the role.

“MIT Sloan occupies a rare position in the world as a management school connected to one of the great engineering and scientific universities,” Kellogg says.

She adds: “Rick has a strong track record of bringing faculty from different domains together, and we think he is going to be great at connecting Sloan even further to the rest of MIT, around grand challenges such as climate, AI, and health care.”

Lo credits Schmittlein for “an incredible 17-year legacy of extraordinary leadership,” observing that Schmittlein helped MIT Sloan expand in size, consolidate its strengths, and build new programs. About Perakis, Kellogg notes, “Georgia’s outstanding work as dean has built on these strengths and sparked important new innovations and partnerships in areas like AI and entrepreneurship. She’s also expanded the school’s footprint in Southeast Asia and helped advance key Institute-wide priorities like the Climate Project at MIT and the Generative AI consortium.”

Kellogg and Lo expressed confidence that Locke would help MIT Sloan continue to adapt and grow.

“MIT and MIT Sloan are at inflection points in our ability to invent the future, given the role technology is playing in virtually every aspect of our lives,” Lo says. “Rick has the same vision and ambitions that we do, and the experience and skills to help us realize that vision. We couldn’t be more excited by this choice.”

Lo adds: “Rick is a first-rate scholar and first-rate educator who really gets our mission and core values and ethos. Dave was an extraordinary dean, and we expect the same from Rick. He sees the full potential of MIT Sloan and how to achieve it.”

Locke received his BA from Wesleyan University and an MA in education from the University of Chicago. He earned his doctorate in political science at MIT, writing a dissertation about local politics and industrial change in Italy, under the supervision of now-Institute Professor Suzanne Berger.

Locke joined the MIT faculty as an assistant professor of international management, was promoted in 1993 to an associate professor of management and political science, and earned tenure in 1996. In 2000, he was named the Alvin J. Siteman Professor of Entrepreneurship, becoming a full professor in 2001.

In 2010, Locke took on a new role at MIT, heading the Department of Political Science, a position he held through 2013; he was also given a new endowed professorship, the Class of 1922 Professor of Political Science and Management. During the same time frame, Locke also served as deputy dean at MIT Sloan, from 2009 through 2010, and then again from 2012 through 2013.

Locke moved to Brown in order to take the position of director of the Thomas J. Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs. In 2015, he was named Brown’s provost, the university’s chief academic officer and budget officer.

During his initial chapter at MIT Sloan, Locke co-founded MIT’s Global Entrepreneurship Lab (G-Lab) as well as other action learning programs, helped the effort to double the size of the Sloan Fellows Program, and worked to update MIT Sloan Executive Education programs, among other projects.

Locke has authored or co-authored five books and dozens of journal articles and book chapters, helping open up the study of global labor practices while also examining the political implications of industrial changes and labor relations. For his research on working conditions in global supply chains, Locke was given the Faculty Pioneer for Academic Leadership award by the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program, the Progress Medal from the Society of Progress, the Dorothy Day Award for Outstanding Labor Research from the American Political Society Association, and the Responsible Research in Management Award.

His books include “Remaking the Italian Economy” (1995); “Employment Relations in a Changing World Economy” (co-edited with Thomas Kochan, and Michael Piore, 1995); “Working in America” (co-authored with Paul Osterman, Thomas Kochan, Michael Piore, 2001); “The Promise and Limits of Private Power Promoting Labor Standards in a Global Economy” (2013); and “Production in the Innovation Economy (co-edited with Rachel Wellhausen, 2014).

A committed educator, Locke has won numerous awards for teaching in his career including the Graduate Management Society Teaching Award, in 1990; the Excellence in Teaching Award from MIT Sloan, in 2003; the Class of 1960 Innovation in Teaching Award, from MIT in 2007; and the Jamieson Prize for Excellence in Teaching, from MIT, in 2008.

Over the course of his career, Locke has been a visiting professor or scholar at several universities, including Bocconi University in Milan; the Harvard Kennedy School; the Saïd Business School of the University of Oxford; the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil; the Universita’ Ca Foscari of Venice, Italy; the Universita Degli Studi di Milano, Italy; Georg-August Universität, in Göttingen, Germany; and the Universita’ Federico II in Naples, Italy.

Locke has remained connected to MIT even over the most recent decade of his career, including his service as a member of the MIT Corporation.

“I loved my time at MIT Sloan because of its wonderful mix of ambition, energy, and drive for excellence, but also humility,” Locke says. “We knew that we didn’t always have all the answers, but were curious to learn more, and eager to do the work to find solutions to some of the world’s great challenges. Now as dean, I look forward to once again being part of this wonderful community.”

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