Sally Blount
Michael L. Nemmers Professor of Strategy
Sally Blount is the Michael L. Nemmers Professor of Strategy at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where she is also a proud alumna and former dean. An internationally recognized thought leader in management and business education, Blount is a highly rated professor and sought-after speaker on leadership, governance, and organizational growth and transformation.
From 2010-2018, Blount served as dean at the Kellogg School of Management. Prior to that, from 2004-2010, she served as dean of the New York University undergraduate College of Business and vice dean of the Stern School of Business. In both deanships, Blount was a record-setting fundraiser, partnering with and leading teams that completed two capital campaigns that were transformational for their institutions, together raising more than $550M. A natural change agent, Blount worked with faculty at both schools to envision and implement substantive innovations in curriculum design, research, executive outreach, and global education, while dramatically improving the caliber of students applying to and attending both programs. She is also proud to have led the teams that envisioned, funded, and completed two significant building projects, one in the heart of New York City and one on the shores of Lake Michigan.
In addition to her current role at Kellogg, Blount is the President and CEO of Catholic Charities of Chicago, one of the largest human services providers in the Midwest – serving more than 300,000 people annually. Since 2020, Blount has led the organization through a five-year capabilities-building and strategic realignment process that has reimagined Charities’ governance and deepened its impact for the people and communities it serves.
Blount also sits on the boards of Abbott Laboratories (ABT-NYSE) and the Joyce Foundation. She previously served on the boards of Ulta Beauty (ULTA-NASDAQ), the Commercial Club of Chicago, the Economic Club of Chicago, and the Finance Council for the Archdiocese of Chicago.
Blount is the author of two books and more than 30 peer-reviewed academic publications in negotiations and behavioral economics and a two-time recipient of National Science Foundation research grants. At year-end 2017, she was named one of LinkedIn's Top Voices and Poets and Quants Dean of the Year. Blount has been regularly featured in news outlets such as The Harvard Business Review, Financial Times, Forbes, The Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek, Fortune, and MSNBC. In 2012, she co-chaired the World Economic Forum on Latin America.
Blount holds M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and a B.S. in engineering from Princeton University. Her first faculty appointment was at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business from 1992 to 2001. In 2001, she joined New York University's Stern School of Business, where she became the Abraham L. Gitlow Professor of Management and chaired the promotion and tenure committee, before assuming the college deanship in 2004. Blount worked for several years between college and graduate school, first for the Boston Consulting Group and later as business manager for an architecture and design firm.
Blount is the mother of three now-adult children, Melissa, Haley, and Cameron, and daily companion to two dogs, Remi and Rebel Joe.
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Ph.D., 1992, Organizational Behavior, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
M.S., 1991, Organizational Behavior, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University
B.S.E., 1983, Engineering Systems and Economic Policy, School of Engineering and Applied Science and Woodrow Wilson School of International and Public Affairs, Princeton University, High Honors -
Michael L. Nemmers Professor of Strategy, Strategy, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2018-present
Dean, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2010-2018
Michael L. Nemmers Professor of Management & Organizations, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 2010-2018
Advisor to the President and Provost for Global Integration, New York University, 2007-2010
Abraham L. Gitlow Professor of Management and Organizations, New York University, 2004-2010
Vice Dean, Stern School of Business, New York University, 2004-2010
Dean of the Stern School of Business Undergraduate College, New York University, 2004-2010
Professor of Management, Stern School of Business, New York University, 2001-2004
Associate Professor of Behavioral Science, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 1996-2001
Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science, Booth School of Business, University of Chicago, 1992-1996
Instructor/Research Assistant, Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, 1988-1992 -
Director of Finance and Planning, Eva Maddox Associates, Inc., 1985-1988
Associate Consultant, Boston Consulting Group, Inc., 1983-1985 -
Division Chair, Academy of Management, 2004-2005
Program Chair, Academy of Management, 2002-2003
Review Panel member, National Science Foundation, 2002-2004
Doctoral Consortium Coordinator, Academy of Management, 2001-2002
Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation, 2001-2005
Best Paper Award, Academy of Management Proceedings, 2000
Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation, 1998-1999
Executive Board member, Economic Science Association, 1997-2000
Alumni Advisory Board member, Princeton University School of Engineering, 1996-2002
Research Scholar, James S. Kemper Foundation, 1996-1997
Best Dissertation Award, International Association for Conflict Management, 1993
Austin Scholar, J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management, 1988
Sheldon Research Prize, Tau Beta Pi, Sigma Xi, Princeton University, 1982-1983
Visiting Scholar, Institute of Applied Systems Analysis, 1982
Leading Organizational Transformation (STRTX-969-0)
This course takes the perspective of chief executives who operate at "height and scale." It explores what management and leadership look and feel like when you oversee 1,000 to 100,000 people and $500M to billions in revenue. How do you lead when you are only one person and you can't "do" the work of the organization yourself, you can only steer the course of those who do? To make this perspective concrete, we will start by identifying five growth archetypes commonly found in large organizations. With this orienting framework in hand, we will study the four key levers that leaders have available to them for shaping and strengthening the large, complex organizations they lead and how these change across the archetypes. These include: • Building your senior leadership team • Setting an organizational growth agenda • Building out strategic communications capabilities • Understanding and leveraging your own social capital
Organizational Growth and Transformation (STRT-969-5)
This course studies how organizations grow and transform themselves over time. Taking the perspective of the senior leader, this course unpacks the idea of "vision." The course begins with a review of typical organizational growth paths and structural designs, moving to the study of how senior leaders envision and execute on organizational innovation and transformation. Core topics include: assessing organizational performance (with a focus on using non-financial metrics as well as more traditional financial analyses) and setting a growth agenda, then building the senior team, re-shaping an organization's power grid, and designing and leveraging a communications strategy to enact change.
Organizational Growth and Transformation (STRT-969-0)
Strategy and Renewal in Established Nonprofits (STRT-931-5)
The longest-lived organizations in the world are nonprofits; consider for example, universities and churches. Within the US, there are close to two million nonprofit organizations, accounting for an estimated 5.5% of GDP and 6.5% of the workforce. Throughout the last century, nonprofit organizations have played a critical role in delivering needed human services, promoting the arts and humanities, and fostering education, debate and dialogue about core issues within society. Given their distinct market structure and funding models, these mission-focused organizations face a unique set of challenges in adapting to changing social and economic conditions and assuring their financial health and longevity. The focus of this class will be on strategy and governance within large, established, self-standing nonprofits, i.e., those that have survived beyond their founder generation, formalized their staff and board structures, and grown to a sustainable, operating scale of $50 million on more. The course will focus on nonprofits in human services, the arts, and education that typically operate at a local or regional level, drawing many of our examples from the Chicago and New York metropolitan markets as exemplars. We will also include organizations that have affiliate/franchise operating models (e.g., Boys and Girls Clubs, Junior Achievement, Feeding America) that are 90+% funded at the local operating level. We will study the overall structure of the nonprofit sector, the predictable cycles of decline and renewal that characterize entities in this space, and the strategic and governance mechanisms required to sustain vitality and relevance over decades. Note: With just five sessions of content, this course will not attempt to meaningfully address the management of large-scale, nonprofit, divisional and group-divisional models in education (e.g., large universities and school systems), religion (e.g., the US or global Presbyterian or Catholic Church), or healthcare (e.g., nursing homes, hospitals, and hospital systems).
Field Study (STRT-498-5)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.
Negotiations Fundamentals (MORS-472-5)
This course is designed to provide the fundamentals of negotiation strategy and to improve students' skills in all phases of negotiation. The course provides an understanding of prescriptive and descriptive negotiation theory as it applies to two party negotiations, team negotiations, resolution of disputes, agents and ethics, and management of the negotiation process. The course is based on a series of simulated negotiations in a variety of contexts. Attendance at every class meeting is mandatory.
MORS offers three unique courses in the area of negotiation and conflict resolution: Negotiation Fundamentals, Negotiating in a Virtual World, and Advanced Negotiations. Students ideally begin the negotiation coursework by taking Negotiation Fundamentals and then taking the advanced courses: Negotiating in a Virtual World and/or Advanced Negotiations. Please note that students are required to take Negotiation Fundamentals prior to taking Advanced Negotiations. Students are allowed to take Negotiating in a Virtual World without having taken Negotiation Fundamentals but will be expected to catch up on core concepts asynchronously through the course's virtual format. Once a student has taken Negotiating in a Virtual World, they are no longer eligible to take Negotiation Fundamentals but may go on to take Advanced Negotiations.
