Clayton S. Rose

Clayton Rose is Baker Foundation Professor of Management Practice. He currently teaches the course Accountability in the Advanced Management Program. His research is focused on the how leaders can manage the challenges created by the intense, varied and often irreconcilable political and culture pressures buffeting organizations today. From 2015 until 2023 he served as president of Bowdoin College. Prior to Bowdoin, he was a member of the HBS faculty, teaching and writing on issues of leadership, ethics, the Global Financial Crisis, and the role of business in society. In addition, he chaired the Academic Performance Committee and the Conduct Review Board and served as the inaugural chair for MBA Community Standards. He received the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching and the Robert F Greenhill Award for service. He spent the first twenty years of his career in finance at J.P. Morgan, retiring as vice chair, where he led, built and fixed businesses in securities, derivatives and banking, including heading each of the global equities and global investment banking divisions. He was a member of the firm’s senior management. He earned his undergraduate degree and MBA from the University of Chicago. In 2003, he enrolled in the doctoral program in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania to study issues of race in America, earning his master’s degree in 2005 and his PhD with distinction in 2007. He has served on a number of corporate and philanthropic boards. Rose is currently a director of the Bank of America, where he chairs the Enterprise Risk Committee, he chairs the board of trustees of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of basic biomedical research with a $25 billion endowment, and he serves as a director of The Pew Charitable Trusts.

As Bowdoin’s president he focused on strengthening the intellectual mission of the College; vigorously championing “intellectual fearlessness”—the imperative of respectful engagement with ideas that challenge our own; significantly expanding the College’s work on inclusion and diversity; increasing access and opportunity for students; addressing the student mental health challenge; reimagining and significantly expanding career exploration and development for students; and enhancing the College’s leadership in sustainability. He also strengthened Bowdoin’s financial condition, successfully leading its most ambitious fundraising campaign ever, saw record amounts raised in annual funds, and had one of the highest alumni participation rates in the country. His tenure saw construction of essential new facilities for teaching, learning, research, residential life, and athletics, as well as a new home for Bowdoin’s storied Peary-MacMillan Arctic Museum.

During his presidency, applications to Bowdoin increased by 62 percent. Applications from students of color increased by 60 percent, while those from first-generation students increased by 129 percent. First-year students receiving financial aid increased from 45 to 49 percent, with the College expanding its aid program by eliminating the summer work requirement for many students, increasing aid to middle-class families, and extending “need-blind” admission to international students, making it one of only seven colleges and universities in the nation that is need-blind in admissions, grant only/no loan in its financial aid, and meets the full calculated need of every student. 

The THRIVE program was also established to address the needs of students entering Bowdoin from significantly under-resourced high schools, and Bowdoin launched an effort to actively recruit veterans and community college students for admission to the College. 

Three new facilities—the Roux Center for the Environment, the Schiller Coastal Studies Center, and the John and Lile Gibbons Center for Arctic Studies—were conceived of and completed during his presidency. Along with the Bowdoin College Scientific Station established in 1936 on Kent Island in the Bay of Fundy, they positioned Bowdoin to significantly advance its work and leadership in the interdisciplinary and interconnected studies of the oceans, environment, climate, and the Arctic. 

Rose led Bowdoin through the COVID-19 pandemic, during which the College successfully delivered on its two goals of protecting the health and safety of the campus and larger Brunswick communities and providing a strong Bowdoin education to its students, while also continuing its work on the priorities for the future. In addition, no employees were laid off or furloughed, salary and benefit cuts were restored well ahead of peer institutions, and budgets were balanced using existing operating reserves without the need for extraordinary steps. 

In addition, Rose launched the first comprehensive review in decades of board governance, resulting in changes that strengthened the engagement of the board of trustees with the long-term issues facing the College. The diversity of the board—across race, gender, age, professional background, and sexual orientation, among other dimensions—was also significantly increased, as was the diversity of the College’s senior staff.