Scott Beardsley’s resume was filled with a quarter-century of business experience spent crisscrossing the globe to work in 40 countries when he considered a career pivot to education.
Education, after all, “is in my blood,” he said.
“I come from a family of educators,” Beardsley said, ticking off a dozen relatives, including his parents, siblings, aunts and uncles who have served as teachers, professors, principals and college presidents. “It’s the environment I grew up in. I’ve always believed in the power of education to transform people’s lives.”
After leading learning and leadership development for McKinsey & Company globally, he’d considered a switch into academia full-time but was told he wasn’t a “traditional” candidate. So, for his doctoral thesis, he researched the experience of academic leaders who came from non-traditional backgrounds, a body of work that later became his book, “Higher Calling.”
Putting his own nontraditional background to the test, he successfully applied to be the dean of the University of Virginia’s Darden School of Business. He and his family moved into Pavilion I on the Lawn in 2015.
“When we moved here from Brussels, Belgium, we didn’t know a single person,” he said. “So, we thought the best way to get to know people would be to live in the heart of the University. I told myself it was the chance of a lifetime to live in a UNESCO World Heritage site that was built by Thomas Jefferson.”
Born in rural Maine into a family of educators and dairy farmers, Beardsley was raised in Alaska, where he delivered newspapers in temperatures as low as 30 below zero. He graduated at the top of his Anchorage public high school class. He earned an electrical engineering degree from Tufts University – not because of a burning interest in the subject, but because that was the scholarship presented to him.
He then went to work for McKinsey & Company, a consulting firm that helps companies innovate and grow by maximizing the value of their people. Based in Belgium, he traveled more than 5 million miles to serve his clients, a period of time he called “exhausting and challenging, but rewarding.” His rise to senior partner was one of the fastest in company history.
Along the way, he earned an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a doctorate of education degree from the University of Pennsylvania.
At the Darden School, Beardsley oversaw an effort to boost the school’s standing to a string of No. 1 rankings in several categories, including overall MBA program, faculty excellence and global experiences, from Princeton Review, U.S. News & World Report, the Economist, Bloomberg Businessweek and others. At the same time, he raised a record $632 million in total financial impact, primarily for faculty excellence and scholarships, and grew the school’s endowment to more than $1 billion.
He also raised a family on the Lawn with his wife, Claire Dufournet, and most of their children earned UVA degrees, as have a growing roster of nieces and nephews. The family’s golden retriever, named Lawnie, is a fixture in the Academical Village. As members of the Lawn community, the family has hosted Lawn residents – or Lawnies – for meals and gatherings, while Beardsley has also taught seminars in the original Jeffersonian classroom for UVA undergrads and Darden School MBA students.
And as a lifelong competitive tennis player, he volunteered to help coach student-athletes on the UVA men’s tennis team.
Beardsley was serving in his third term at the Darden School – making him UVA’s longest-serving current dean – when the University’s special committee began soliciting nominations for UVA’s next president. Beardsley’s name came up repeatedly, and committee members suggested he apply. The job profile, he noted, solidly matched his education and experience.
“First, I am already at UVA, and I love the institution,” he said. “I feel called to serve something I care about, and I believe in the mission. What UVA does is important. It changes people’s lives. It serves the community. It advances knowledge. It provides world-class patient care. It develops people’s capabilities, the capabilities of young students to be leaders, and it does all that with the highest degree of excellence.”
When asked about how he’ll shape the University as president, Beardsley said that wouldn’t be up to him alone.
“My vision is that UVA achieve the full potential of its mission of education, research, public service and patient care.” he said. “What really matters is how we collectively pursue that mission as the students, faculty, staff, alumni and all the outstanding caregivers at UVA Health. My role as president is to help everyone here achieve their full potential and improve the world. We have an amazing University, and it’s just a matter of how we take it to the next level in pursuit of that noble mission.
“I get the opportunity, the incredible honor, to be the 10th president,” Beardsley continued. “I just hope to carry the torch forward into the future and help UVA continue striving for its full potential.”
