With more than 20 years as a faculty member at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Peter DeMarzo, The John G. McDonald Professor of Finance, is uniquely qualified to be interim dean. DeMarzo is serving in the position while a search is underway to replace Jonathan Levin, who has become Stanford University’s 13th president. In this interview, DeMarzo talks about his involvement at Stanford GSB, what makes the school special, and his hopes for its future.
You’ve been a graduate student at Stanford and a faculty member and senior associate dean at Stanford GSB. What do you bring from those experiences to your interim deanship?
A Little More About Peter
Favorite weekend activities: Cycling out to the Pacific Coast, or a powder day at Sugar Bowl
Advice you give to students: Keep learning, open yourself to new challenges, and don’t be afraid to go deep.
Hidden gems on the Stanford campus: So many… a jog around Lake Lag after a winter storm, the many sculpture gardens, the eucalyptus groves, discovery walk, an organ concert at MemChu, a concert in the grass at Frost
Indeed, I have been extremely fortunate to experience Stanford and the GSB from multiple perspectives. As a student, I was first drawn to the GSB for its leadership in innovating new strategic frameworks to understand management problems and develop their solutions. I feel extraordinarily lucky that I could return as a faculty member and directly contribute to the GSB’s mission — collaborating in research with my incredibly talented colleagues and teaching the next generation of leaders.
Most exciting for me is how much I get to learn every day from my peers and from the students; together, they continually inspire me to work to strengthen the connection between theory and practice. Finally, as a senior associate dean and now interim dean, I have the honor and privilege to appreciate and build on the many touchpoints of the GSB, through its staff and centers, its alumni, and its relationship with the campus and the broader scientific and practitioner communities.
What makes Stanford GSB special?
Definitely what makes the GSB special is its people and their commitment to excellence and impact through rigorous research and its dissemination to practice. This commitment defines our approach to teaching, research, and outreach to the world. And none of this would be possible without the support of our dedicated and talented staff.
What do you enjoy most about your interactions with students and alumni?
The opportunity to constantly learn from them. Almost all of my research and my writings have been informed by the questions they bring and the experiences they have shared. That access to the best and brightest practitioners is a real highlight of the GSB.
Beyond teaching and research, you have also been involved in broader efforts to promote knowledge and increase public understanding of finance. What are you most proud of in that work?
In collaboration with many of my colleagues here, we have helped to change the dialogue around important policy questions that have caused substantial confusion among policymakers. One prime example is bank capital regulation, in which many policymakers overestimated the cost and misunderstood the benefit of improving capital requirements to increase financial stability and improve market functioning.
You played a founding role in Stanford LEAD — our flagship one-year online program. Can you tell us more about it?
The mission of LEAD is to try to bring the “magic” of the GSB to a global audience of experienced leaders who lacked the opportunity to attend Stanford in person. It was the first online program — and is still the only program of its type — to truly deliver an intimate and collaborative educational experience. We built it on the broad base of knowledge and pedagogy we have developed here at the GSB. I’m proud that it is now in its tenth year, and more than 5,000 people have gone through the program.
What are your hopes for the future of Stanford GSB?
Looking to the future, so many of the difficult problems that we face today are fundamentally challenges of leadership and stewardship — that is, we need many more individuals with the skills and insight to guide and lead organizations and institutions to implement positive change in the world. I hope and expect the GSB will be as instrumental in creating the knowledge and developing the leaders to effect that change in the next hundred years as it has in the previous hundred.
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