The University of Texas at Austin has named Bradley Staats as the next dean of the McCombs School of Business. Staats, who currently serves as the Ellison Distinguished Professor of Operations and senior associate dean for strategy and academics at the University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School, will begin his appointment at UT on July 1.
Staats is a UT alumnus with nearly 30 years of industry and academic leadership experience. At UNC Kenan-Flagler, Staats oversees academic strategy and program excellence across undergraduate business, Master of Accounting in two formats, Master of Science in Management, and MBA degree programs in five formats. Before serving as senior associate dean, he was associate dean of MBA programs, where he helped lead significant curricular and programmatic transformation, including the launch of the Charlotte Executive MBA Program, and expanded industry partnerships. He founded and is the faculty director of the Center for the Business of Health at UNC Kenan-Flagler, a robust interdisciplinary initiative across UNC-Chapel Hill bringing together expertise to generate knowledge, prepare leaders across sectors, and catalyze important collaborations around the business of health. Before academia, he worked for Goldman Sachs and a venture capital firm.
“At a pivotal time for UT, Dr. Staats returns to the Forty Acres with deep expertise and a distinguished record of leadership across industry and healthcare,” said William Inboden, executive vice president and provost. “I look forward to partnering with him to ensure McCombs continues to cultivate exceptional students and faculty, strengthen industry relationships, and prepare the next generation of entrepreneurs and business leaders in our great state and nation.” Staats was selected after a national search that began last fall.
A decorated educator and scholar in operations management and organizational learning, Staats studies how and under what conditions individuals, teams and organizations can perform their best. His work bridges operations, analytics and behavioral science, with applications spanning healthcare, technology and service industries. He is also the author of the award-winning book “Never Stop Learning: Stay Relevant, Reinvent Yourself, and Thrive” by Harvard Business Review Press.
At McCombs, Staats will lead a globally acclaimed business school with 700 faculty and staff members and 7,000 students. As dean, he will cultivate a rigorous curriculum that reaches across all of UT’s colleges and schools, with 25% of students either enrolled in a McCombs degree program or pursuing one of the school’s minors. He will also support path-breaking research, expand faculty-industry partnerships, deepen student experiential learning, and grow fundraising and talent pipelines, particularly in areas such as health, artificial intelligence, and entrepreneurship, where McCombs can connect UT strengths to real-world impact.
“Returning to UT and to Austin, where I grew up, is deeply meaningful and inspiring to me,” Staats said. “McCombs is already one of the world’s outstanding business schools, thanks in no small part to Dean Mills’ leadership. This is a unique moment to build on that extraordinary foundation, and I am honored by the opportunity to help McCombs expand its impact across Texas and beyond.”
Staats has driven academic innovation, digital transformation in teaching and curriculum development, and strategic initiatives across multiple degree programs. He earned a B.S. in electrical engineering and B.A. in Plan II and Spanish from UT Austin. Staats went on to obtain both an MBA and a doctorate in technology and operations management from Harvard Business School.
Staats will succeed Lillian Mills, who has served as dean since 2020 and will return to the Jonathan K. Shulkin Department of Accounting as a distinguished faculty member. During her six-year tenure, Mills prepared the school for its next chapter by overseeing record-breaking philanthropic growth, with the What Starts Here campaign reaching nearly $660 million. These efforts secured the foundation for the $425 million, 17-story future undergraduate hub, Mulva Hall, and established naming milestones for the Hildebrand MBA Program, Shulkin Department of Accounting, Rosenthal Department of Management, Harkey Institute for Undergraduate Entrepreneurship, and Langston Wealth Management Center. Under her leadership, McCombs strengthened its academic reputation to a global Financial Times research ranking of No.12 and a No. 6 ranking in U.S. News & World Report for undergraduate programs, with 12 programs ranked in the top 10. Mills also advanced key initiatives in artificial intelligence, sports analytics, entrepreneurship, and pathways to Wall Street.
