Alison Davis-Blake
Alison Davis-Blake is the first female dean of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business, a position she has held since July 2011. She is also the Stephen M. Ross Professor of Business.
Davis-Blake holds a PhD from Stanford University. She graduated from Brigham Young University in 1979 with a bachelor’s in economics. After working in New York at Touche Ross, she returned to BYU to earn a master’s in organizational behavior. She was honored with a Distinguished Alumni Award from BYU’s William G. Dyer Institute for Leading Organizational Change of the Marriott School of Management. She is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
She was also the first female dean of the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management, a position she held from 2006 to 2011. Prior to that appointment, she was associate dean of the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas. She taught for several years at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Davis-Blake is an expert on strategic human resource management and organizational design for effective management of human capital. Her research interests include the effects of outsourcing on organizations and employees, organizational employment, salary and promotion systems, and the determinants and consequences of using contingent workers. She has taught courses in organization theory, organizational behavior, fundamentals of management, and strategic human resource management for undergraduate, MBA, doctoral, and executive education students.
She was born in Palo Alto, California, in 1958 and grew up in the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area of Minnesota. She is married to Michael Blake and they have two sons.
