Bill Boulding, PhD

Bill Boulding, PhD is the JB Fuqua Professor of Business Administration and Former Dean at The Fuqua School of Business, Duke University. William “Bill” Boulding is an accomplished scholar with a passion for helping advance business as a force for good.

Bill has advocated at the top levels of government, industry and academia for ways that enable business to improve society. In 2014, Bill was invited by the White House to be part of an initiative that developed best practices for how business schools can encourage success for women and working families. In 2015, Bill engaged with the New York Federal Reserve in examining the role business schools can play in rebuilding trust in the financial services sector.

Bill’s passionate belief in creating future business leaders who have the ability to bring people who are very different together to work toward a common goal, led to the school’s number-one ranking by Bloomberg Businessweek in 2014. Bill is a sought-after expert by the media on leadership trends and the qualities needed to succeed today, and has been interviewed by CNBC, Bloomberg, The Wall Street Journal and the Financial Times, among others. Bill shares his insights regularly on LinkedIn , and was named a Top Voice on the platform in 2016. He also writes for Fortune and Harvard Business Review.

Bill serves as a member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Values and chairs the board of the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC®), which is the organization that administers the GMAT exam. He is chair of the Board of Directors of Duke Corporate Education and serves on Swarthmore College’s Board of Managers.

Bill has engaged in sponsored research, consulting, or executive development with a number of companies such as IBM, AT&T, Bank of America, Sears, Eli Lilly, Blue Cross/Blue Shield, Ford Motor Company, Lafarge, US Postal Service, Stride Rite, Wolseley, Hanes, Harnischfeger, Thomson Newspapers, Siemens, and Citibank.

Bill has a research interest in evaluating how managers make decisions and how consumers respond. His recent work focuses on the domain of health care, examining the role of the patient experience, clinical adherence to standards and managerial activity in determining the quality of delivered care. His work has been widely published in a number of journals and Bill has been the recipient of numerous research and teaching awards. You can learn more about his research here.

Bill received his BA in Economics from Swarthmore College and his PhD in Managerial Sciences and Applied Economics from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.