Profs. Heather Tookes and Edieal Pinker Appointed to New Deputy Dean Positions

Professors Edieal Pinker and Heather Tookes have been named to two newly created deputy dean posts at the Yale School of Management, effective July 1.

Pinker, the BearingPoint Professor of Operations Research, has been named to a three-year term as deputy dean for strategy. Tookes, a professor of finance, has been named to a three-year term as deputy dean for faculty.

Pinker has served as deputy dean, with responsibility for both faculty hiring and overall academic strategy, for the past six years.

Pinker “has provided me with wise counsel, and over our years working together, he has been a trusted and highly valued advisor to me on countless matters,” Dean Kerwin K. Charles wrote in an email to the Yale SOM community. “I am grateful to him for his willingness to continue to serve in a new leadership role for the next three years.”

Charles added that the new, dual deputy dean configuration will be more efficient.

“It is my hope that this reorganization will position our leadership structure to better tackle current duties and respond nimbly to opportunities that may arise in the next few years,” he wrote. “The second and no less important goal is to ensure a greater presence in leadership discussions of members of the faculty. I am confident that the three of us will form an excellent team going forward.”

Pinker agreed that getting more senior faculty involved in leadership will benefit the school, and applauded the choice of Tookes to take over the key tasks of overseeing tenure-track faculty hiring, retention, promotion, and mentoring, as well as supporting individual faculty research. “Heather is a wonderful choice to take on faculty management issues,” he said.

In his new role, Pinker will be the dean’s point person on issues related to academic centers, curriculum, new initiatives, and non-tenure-track faculty hiring, as well as other strategic issues requiring faculty input.

Pinker said he anticipates focusing most heavily on curriculum development, including a review of the MBA curriculum that is already underway; forging partnerships with other parts of Yale; and assisting Tookes in determining where the school should make its biggest investments in coming years.

Tookes joined Yale SOM in 2004 and has spent her entire academic career at Yale SOM. She has served on the Appointments, Curriculum, and Strategy and on the Research Resources committees. She has also won numerous teaching awards.

She said that her top priority will be supporting existing faculty and attracting new members.

“Faculty are among our most valuable assets,” Tookes said. “I’m excited to be able to recruit, promote, and retain the highest quality faculty. Yale SOM has built such great momentum and growth over the years, and I want to keep moving us in that direction.”

In his years as chief academic officer, Pinker provided important continuity with three different people in the Dean’s chair,  helped recruit 40 faculty members, and directed substantially greater research support to faculty with lasting impact on the school. “I’m very proud of having brought in all these great people, and seeing the impactful research they have produced,” he said.

Pinker added that he is also proud of having played a role in increasing the number of tenured women faculty at the school. When he started as chief academic officer in July 2016, Yale SOM had five tenured women; that number is now up to nine. Perhaps more importantly, he noted, today almost 50% of Yale SOM’s assistant professors are women.

“We’ve been working hard to build the pipeline and diversity along gender lines in the faculty,” Pinker said. “It takes a lot of time to develop a faculty, but over six years we made a lot of progress.”

Reflecting on the pandemic, Pinker notes that, “I have been extremely privileged to work closely with an extremely dedicated set of faculty and staff who not only continued to deliver on our core educational mission with the highest quality during a very difficult period, but also launched important new initiatives like the Broad Center programs.”