About the Dean
Richard Lyons is the dean of the Haas School of Business, UC Berkeley, where he holds the S. K. and Angela Chan Chair in Global Management. Prior to becoming dean in July 2008, he served as the chief learning officer at Goldman Sachs in New York, a position he held since 2006. As chief learning officer, Rich was responsible for leadership development among the firm’s managing directors.
Prior to Goldman Sachs, Rich served as acting dean of the Haas School from 2004 to 2005 and as executive associate dean and Sylvan Coleman Professor of Finance from 2005 to 2006. He received his BS with highest honors from UC Berkeley (finance) and his Ph.D. from MIT (economics). Before coming to Haas, Professor Lyons spent six years on the faculty at Columbia Business School. His teaching expertise is in international finance.
Professor Lyons’ early research focuses on currency markets, a focus reflected in his recent book “The Microstructure Approach to Exchange Rates” (MIT Press). This novel approach to exchange rates examines the market from a trading-room perspective, e.g., the flow of buy and sell orders and why those orders subsequently affect prices, rather than from the traditional perspective of macroeconomics. This line of work focuses on how dispersed information gets reflected in prices via trading. He has published many articles in professional journals on these and other related topics. Recently, his research has taken a quite different tack, namely, exploring the links between leadership and innovation in organizations. These links are of strategic importance to the Haas School.
Professor Lyons’ consulting relationships include the Federal Reserve Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the European Central Bank, and Citibank. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, an associate editor of the California Management Review, and, prior to joining Goldman Sachs, served as chair of the Board of Directors of Matthews Asian Funds, and a member of the Board of Directors of iShares (Barclays Global Investors). He also serves as the faculty director for UC Berkeley’s Blum Center for Developing Economies. In 1998 Professor Lyons received UC Berkeley’s highest teaching honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award, and has won the Haas School’s teacher-of-the-year award six times.
