Dipak C Jain was 17 minutes into his first presentation as the Dean of Kellogg School of Management when the world changed. This was 8.17 AM Chicago time, an hour behind New York. The date was September 11, 2001.
It would have been easy to wallow in this most inauspicious of beginnings. Instead, Jain, the first Indian to head a top-flight US business school, quickly got down to writing letters to the school's alumni seeking their help in placing the graduating students.
"I could see that the global economic environment would become tough and placing the students would be equally so. So I wrote to our former students many of who were in decision-making positions at small and medium enterprises that did not recruit from the top business schools," says Jain.
He was criticised for demeaning the Dean's position by "going around with a begging bowl". However, after Kellogg reported 91 per cent placement rate, the best among all B-schools in the country, in that troubled year, this went on to be become standard practice among the top B-schools.
That's Jain for you. Born and brought up in Tezpur, Assam, he has devoutly followed the age-old Indian ethic of accepting one's fate and moving on to address the situation at hand.
"There are biases everywhere. I may have very well faced them. But even if they became obstacles for me, I did not notice them," says Jain. He says he faces more bias in India. Some time ago, in the breakfast queue at a five-star hotel in New Delhi, the man on the counter wanted to bypass Jain and serve the foreigner behind him.
A five-star hotel in Hyderabad put Jain in a dingy room while allotting spacious suites to each of his three American companions, little knowing that they wouldn't have come to India but for the lure of spending time with the Kellogg Dean.
Text: Suveen K Sinha, Business Standard
Image: Sunil Chopra, left, joins Kathleen Hagerty and Dean Dipak C Jain (R) in leading Kellogg | Photograph: Courtesy, Nathan Mandell, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
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