College of Business Dean Georgette Chapman Phillips Announces Retirement

Georgette Chapman Phillips, the Kevin L. and Lisa A. Clayton Dean of the College of Business, has announced her retirement on June 30, 2024, after serving two five-year appointments as dean.

"It's been a privilege to work with Georgette and see the transformative leadership she has brought to the College of Business,” said President Joseph J. Helble ’82. “The expansion of the faculty and the development of new facilities that have occurred in concert with her focus on excellence and her commitment to building deeper focus at the intersection of business and technology have positioned Lehigh Business extraordinarily well for the decades to come."

Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs Nathan Urban said: “Georgette’s leadership has transformed Lehigh’s business college and she leaves it in a very strong position to continue its upward trajectory. Her decision to focus on the intersection of business and technology is clearly the right one for the college, the university and Lehigh’s students. Her success in bringing the Business Innovation Building to reality through a pandemic is a testament to her vision and dedication. The BIB is the most philanthropically supported academic building in Lehigh’s history and this was only possible because of Georgette’s focus on telling the story of the success of the college and our alumni and making the case for the bright future of the college.”

During Phillips’ tenure, the number of business faculty grew from 79 to 97. She enhanced pathways toward faculty tenure and emphasized the importance of faculty retention within the college.

She created a professional undergraduate advising program within the business school to meet the dynamic needs and goals of business students. In collaboration with the Baker Institute, she created Lehigh Ventures Lab, the first startup accelerator for pre-seed and seed-stage enterprises on the Lehigh campus.

Phillips initiated a partnership with the national LEAD program, a program focused on supporting high-potential youth of diverse backgrounds and building an inclusive pipeline to ensure leadership roles in the global economy. This summer, Lehigh Business began offering scholarships for underrepresented students from the Lehigh Valley to participate in programs offered through Lehigh’s Iacocca Institute. Lehigh Business has been recognized by Insight Into Diversity Magazine for its Masters in Management scholarship program in collaboration with Xavier University of Louisiana.

Phillips described inheriting a strong foundation on which to build. Using her real estate vernacular, “the house [had] good bones,” she said, reflecting on her start at Lehigh in 2014.

“I’m really proud of the fact that we have continuous improvement. We are not idle.”

Phillips instituted a formal review of each business department every five years, comprising internal and external reviews that have created a culture of improvement and growth and identified opportunities, from refinements to curricula to new approaches. The creation of a new Decision and Technology Analytics department stemmed from one such review.

She also created programs to support a culture of “big thinkers” through such initiatives as hosting Impact Symposia on current topics and sponsoring the annual Year of Learning where one theme is woven throughout all business school classes. She also focused on cultivating positive Lehigh connections for students, faculty and staff, including creating an annual faculty research symposium, an annual New Faculty dinner, hosting “donuts with the dean” on the first day of the fall and spring semesters, staff town halls and a “Senior Salute” each April for seniors as they become Lehigh’s newest alumni.

Before Lehigh, Phillips served 22 years as a faculty member and an administrator at the University of Pennsylvania, where she was the vice dean and Director of the Wharton Undergraduate Division, the David B. Ford Professor of Real Estate, and legal studies at Wharton, a professor of law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and a professor of Africana Studies in Penn’s School of Arts and Sciences.

At Lehigh, she is a professor in both the Perella Department of Finance in the College of Business and in the Africana Studies Program in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Phillips is an internationally recognized scholar who has garnered many honors and teaching awards. Her research and teaching is focused on the intersection of law, economics and public policy within the context of the built/man-made environment. Phillips is published in the areas of urban and regional planning, local government law, real estate and housing.

She is a member of the EFMD Global Americas Advisory Board, was chosen as an Arthur Vining Davis Fellow and presenter at the Aspen Ideas Festival Fellow, and is a Weimer School Fellow of Homer Hoyt Institute for Real Estate.

Phillips holds a Juris Doctor degree from Harvard Law School and a bachelor’s degree from Bryn Mawr College, where she holds trustee emeritus status.