Fresh Focus

Stacey Rudnick takes the helm of McCombs’ Center for Leadership and Ethics.

Stacey Rudnick, longtime director of McCombs MBA Career Management, has taken on a new role at the school. This spring, she was appointed director of the Center for Leadership and Ethics, a merger of the existing Leadership Center and the Ethics Unwrapped program. “We have these incredible assets,” Rudnick says, “and putting them together gives us a stronger platform and brand message.”

Assets that are rolling out under Rudnick’s direction include a new leadership core for MBA candidates that will be incorporated into the curriculum beginning in fall 2019, as well as a new MBA fellows program that offers a select group of second-year students the opportunity to coach first-year teams in leadership. The center’s new space at Rowling Hall is equipped with the latest technologies for students to interact with outside individuals and groups via videoconferencing, and offers students the resources to tape and critique their own presentation and interviewing skills. The new leadership curriculum requires students to have two hours of leadership coaching each semester.

“This is about making our students better future leaders. How can we help this person grow professionally and personally?” Rudnick says. “We give them an opportunity to be assessed in communications skills and emotional intelligence and we do both with assessment tools that are scientifically valid. Companies are looking for skills in judgment, flexibility, and problem-solving.”

The new center’s research arm is working with companies that include Samsung, Microsoft, Walmart, and Whole Foods, helping them use their own data in better ways to improve the leadership capacity of their employees.

Before taking on her new role, Rudnick expanded the MBA career team fourfold during the 14 years she led McCombs MBA Career Services. This expansion helped educate, prepare, support, and connect more than 1,200 MBA students in their career search process across six McCombs MBA programs each year. Her success as director grew MBA Career Management resources and budget, built an employer relations team, and added career services for the working professional and executive MBA programs, as well as for Texas MBA alumni.

Rudnick has taught in both the MBA degree programs and executive education seminars at UT, approaching varied topics spanning career direction and choice, negotiations, executive presence, and personal brand. Her deep understanding of McCombs’ programs and people, and her strong relationships with corporate recruiters made her a natural choice for the position, says Ethan Burris, faculty director of the center. Increasing partnerships with outside companies is important to the center’s mission.

“Our leadership program is analytics-driven,” says Burris. “And our corporate partners help us use data to pinpoint leadership characteristics over time. In turn, we help them learn how to maximize their data to its fullest.”

Rudnick says that the idea behind all of this is to enhance everyone’s understanding of what leadership really means.

“Our cutting-edge research and innovative content improves our students’ and our corporate partners’ capacity to lead and craft their own unique voices,” Rudnick says. “This in turn creates happier, healthier, and more productive work environments.”

This article appeared in the fall 2018 issue of McCombs magazine. Click on the link to see the full issue.