Chancellor, UC Berkeley | Professor & Former Dean, Haas School of Business | William & Janet Cronk Chair in Innovative Leadership
Economic Analysis & Policy | Finance
About
Rich Lyons began his term as the 12th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, on July 1, 2024, as the first undergraduate alum to serve as Chancellor, receiving his BS degree from Berkeley in 1982.* He returned to Berkeley in 1993, joining the faculty after earning his PhD in Economics from MIT and following six years on the faculty at Columbia University. Read More
Lyons’ CV details his various roles and experience (opens in a new tab).
Lyons’ pioneering work as a scholar focuses on how information within a society is aggregated and expressed in price signals, which in turn helps societies to make better decisions. Most of that work focuses on international exchange rates, i.e., the prices of all of one country’s goods and services relative to another. His book The Microstructure Approach to Exchange Rates was instrumental in defining the field.
Lyons is also known for culture leadership – anchoring institutions on distinctive values that help create a cohesive community with a shared understanding of, and support for, the mission. He is a powerful advocate for public higher education that is both accessible and excellent, reflected in his favored phrase that, “It is stunning – singular even – what Berkeley is able to achieve at the scale that it achieves it.” Culture leadership in his view also connects to the “why” of great education, including not just knowledge and thinking tools, but also exposure to opportunities, which he views as fundamental to personal development. You can’t be what you can’t see – Berkeley is an engine for people to see in themselves what they could not see, imbued with a sense of stewardship for the greater good that is a signature for this public university.
Prior to serving as Chancellor, Lyons served as both the Dean of Berkeley’s Haas School of Business and, over the most recent 4+ years, led the development and expansion of innovation and entrepreneurship campuswide. He did not realize how much he would enjoy fundraising when he first took the Dean role: Partnering with others to fund the future of the institution that has had more impact on his life than any other has been enjoyable and meaningful. Overseeing innovation and entrepreneurship at a university that is not just great at creating enterprises in the civic and public sectors, but is in fact #1 in the world for creating venture-funded startups (source: Pitchbook) has helped sharpen a lens on how Berkeley can participate more in all the value, economic and otherwise, that it creates, and do so in a way fully consistent with advancing its core mission (producing long-term societal benefit(link is external) (opens in a new tab)) and distinctive values.
Lyons is an ardent supporter of the student experience, which comes in part from his own experience of the transformative effect of a Berkeley education. In 1998 he was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, Berkeley’s highest teaching award, which recognizes “sustained excellence in teaching that incites intellectual curiosity in students, inspires colleagues, and makes students aware of significant relationships between the academy and the world at large.” Asked at a meeting among colleagues what his “six-word memoir is,” Rich responded with “long-term love affair with ideas, learning.”
Lyons often provokes people with the question, “just imagine where Berkeley would be without the momentous contributions to academic excellence and accessibility made possible by our alumni.” As an alum himself, and contributor since shortly after leaving Berkeley in the 1980s, Lyons delights in mixing it up with alumni and working together to steward this remarkable university, truly one of society’s most important, and distinctive, assets.
*Also a UC Berkeley undergraduate alum, Robert Sproul was appointed President of the UC system in 1930.
Expertise and Research Interests
- Leadership and Culture
- Cryptocurrencies
- Microstructure Finance
- Exchange Rate Economics
- International Finance
Videos
- Richard K. Lyons and Jennifer Chatman. The Berkeley Haas School of Business: Codifying, Embedding, and Sustaining Culture. BerkeleyHaas Case Series.
- Richard Lyons and Ganesh Viswanath-Natraj. What Keeps Stablecoins Stable? (opens in a new tab) Journal of International Money & Finance. March 2023
- Richard K. Lyons with M. Evans. Order Flow and Exchange Rate Dynamics. Journal of Political Economy.
2002 - Richard K. Lyons. The Microstructure Approach to Exchange Rates. MIT Press.
2001 - Richard K. Lyons with T. Ito and M. Melvin. Is There Private Information in the FX Market? The Tokyo Experiment. Journal of Finance.
1998
At Haas since 1993
- July 2024 – present, Chancellor, UC Berkeley
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2020 – June 2024, Associate Vice Chancellor and Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer
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2023 – present, Chair, UC President’s Council for Entrepreneurship
- 2018 – present, William & Janet Cronk Chair in Innovative Leadership, Haas School of Business
- 2008 – 2018, Dean and Professor of Business, Haas School of Business
- 2009 – 2016, Kruttschnitt Family Chair in Financial Institutions
- 2006 – 2008, S. K. and Angela Chan Chair in Global Management
- 2006 – 2008, Chief Learning Officer, Goldman Sachs
- 2005 – 2008, Executive Associate Dean, Haas School of Business
- 2004 – 2005, Acting Dean, Haas School of Business
- 2004, Sylvan Coleman Professor of Finance
- 2004, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs
- 1993 – 2004, Professor (Assistant/Associate/Full), Haas School of Business
- 1987 – 1993, Professor (Assistant/Associate), Graduate School of Business, Columbia University
- 1987, Summer Intern, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Washington D.C.
- 1985, Research Assistant, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), Paris
- 1983 – 1984, Research Analyst, Financial Industries Division, SRI International (formerly Stanford Research Institute)
Visiting Postions
- University of Toulouse, Toulouse, France
- Stockholm University, Stockholm, Sweden
- London School of Economics, London, UK
- Foundation for Advanced Information and Research (FAIR), Tokyo, Japan
- University of Aix-Marseille, Marseille, France
- Board: Matthews Asia Funds
- Board: Syntax Funds
- Board: Ashesi University Foundation, Ghana
- Research Associate: National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER)
- Member: Council on Foreign Relations
- Advisor: IMF, World Bank, Federal Reserve Bank, European Commission
- Advisory Board, Economic Policy Review (NY Fed.)
- English
- French
Sterling Schoen Award for Diversity Leadership from the Consortium
2018
Berkeley Citation
Highest campus honor for individuals whose contributions to UC Berkeley go beyond the call of duty
2018
National Science Foundation grantee
1994-1997, 1997-2000, 2000-2003
National Science Foundation Graduate Fellowship
1984-1987
Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, MFE Program
2003
Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, MBA Program
1994, 2000
Earl F. Cheit Award for Excellence in Teaching, Evening MBA Program
1996, 1999
Distinguished Teaching Award
UC Berkeley’s Highest Teaching Award
1998
Highest Honors, UC Berkeley
1982
Phi Beta Kappa
Member
- UC Berkeley is top university in number of companies founded by undergraduate alumni (opens in a new tab), Berkeley News, 9/12/2023
- A Silicon Valley Veteran on the Future of Innovation and Entrepreneurship (opens in a new tab), Inc., 9/25/2022
- How Berkeley is leaning in to the biotech boom (opens in a new tab), San Francisco Business Times, 5/27/2022
- You Can Buy a Piece of a Nobel Prize-Winning Discovery (opens in a new tab), The New York Times, 10/27/2021
- How Academia Can Be A Leader In Entrepreneurship: Interview With UC Berkeley’s Chief Innovation & Entrepreneurship Officer Dr. Rich Lyons (opens in a new tab), Forbes, 11/23/2021
- UC Berkeley ranks as top public university for startup founders, 2nd overall (opens in a new tab), The Daily Californian, 11/21/2021
- Taking changemaking beyond the classroom (opens in a new tab), UC Berkeley News, 08/27/2021
- Elon Musk Decries ‘M.B.A.-ization’ of America (opens in a new tab), The Wall Street Journal, 12/09/2020
- Corporate Responsibility and The Two Minds of Milton Friedman (opens in a new tab), ProMarket, 11/16/2020
- Nobel Laureate, Berkeley Economist Oliver Williamson Dies at 87 (opens in a new tab), Bloomberg, 05/23/2020
- The Berkeley Changemaker™ (opens in a new tab), California, 06/18/2020
- A Month in Review – April 2020 (opens in a new tab), Securities, 04/30/2020
- 5 Berkeley SkyDeck startups that might change the way we live (opens in a new tab), UC Berkeley News, 02/10/2020
- American business schools are reinventing the MBA (opens in a new tab), The Economist, 11/02/2019
- “Richard Lyons, UC Berkeley’s first CIEO: “I plan to set up a series of benchmarks” (opens in a new tab), MBA & Educación Ejecutiva (Spanish), 09/30/2019
- Chancellor’s Letter: The Year of Implementation (opens in a new tab), California, 09/11/2019
- UC Berkeley appoints its first director of innovation and entrepreneurship (opens in a new tab), AmericaEconomia, 07/18/2019
- International Finance, Undergraduate & Executive MBA
- Currency Markets, MBA programs
- Financial Market Microstructure, Undergraduate Program