Miami Today Profile Joan Phillips

As the new dean of the Andreas School of Business at Barry University, Joan Phillips brings decades of experience in academia, research and insight from the business world.

A widely published marketing scholar, Ms. Phillips wants to build on the school’s existing community relationships and expand its curriculum to meet local, national and international demands.

“I want [students] to be aligned with what society needs – what Miami-Dade needs,” she said. “We’ve made huge investments in our resources and faculty time in the area of entrepreneurship. We want to continue to build on that, and I want to spend time with our students to find out what their needs are and how we can better serve them.”

She said she envisions broadening the school’s offerings in analytics and specialized sales, but not at the expense of dependable fields with consistent high demand.

“Those are the areas to explore, but all of the growth will need to align with our faculty’s expertise and what the students need,” she said. “The boring answer is the world always needs more accountants – people with financial training – and management, which tends to be our largest major.”

Ms. Phillips previously held positions at Loyola University Chicago’s Quinlan School of Business, where she taught and served in multiple administrative roles, including associate dean, special assistant to the president and special assistant to the provost, with whom she worked on academic innovation.

Prior to that, she was a faculty member at Michigan State University, the University of Kentucky and the University of Notre Dame and worked in publishing and consulting.

“Part of what drove me to academics to be a business professor,” she said, “was that I was fascinated by the issues going on in business.”

Ms. Phillips sat down with Miami Today reporter Jesse Scheckner. The interview, recorded by Jahmoukie Dayle, can be found Friday at http://bit.ly/2uNHy0Q.
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