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 development, board governance, and organizational 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 500,000 people annually. Blount is leading the organization through a three-year capabilities-building and strategic planning process that will reimagine Charities’ governance and deepen its impact -- as they prepare to serve those in need in an increasingly polarized and economically unequal, post-pandemic world. 

Blount sits on the board of two Fortune 500 companies, Abbott Laboratories and Ulta Beauty, as well as the boards of the Joyce Foundation and the Economic Club of Chicago. She is also a member of the Finance Council of the Archdiocese of Chicago, where she is part of the team working with the Cardinal to re-envision leadership development for priests.

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 is 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.

• 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

Executive Development Program

The Kellogg Executive Development Program transforms organizational leaders. It equips top-performing, mid-level to senior managers to make decisions and take strategic action based upon both traditional and innovative business practices. Participants build skills and awareness as they realize their potential for assuming general management roles.

Leading Organizational Transformation (KACIX-469-0)
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)


Field Study (MORS-498-0)
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.