For leaders in business education

From associate dean to the deanship. You don't have to walk it alone.

WIBE is the year-round room you join as a chair and stay in until you're the dean. Real peers in your exact seat. Every month. For as long as you need them.

NO NOMINATION.  NO GATEKEEPING.  NO PERMISSION REQUIRED.
27
Members promoted to dean
And counting. The members who stayed are the ones moving up.
+200
Members
10
Executive Circles
2020
Building the room
Member moments

The room, in real life.

Two members in conversation
The reality nobody warned you about

One day they're your colleagues. The next, you're their boss.

The day you stepped into leadership, the people who made academia bearable became your direct reports. Or your critics. The work you love arrived with budgets, personnel, accreditation, and crisis weeks no one trained you for. And the higher you go, the lonelier the room gets.

You don't need another conference that fades by November. You need people in your exact seat. Every month. People who already know what you walked into this year.

That's what WIBE is for.

The path

The path to the deanship, made visible.

Most organizations sell you a program with an end date. WIBE gives you the room between the programs. The years where the career actually happens. You don't graduate out of WIBE. You move up through it.

1

Pioneers

Chairs & faculty leaders

The frontline. Where you learn to lead people, programs, and performance before the title fully catches up to the job.

2

Navigators

Associate & assistant deans

The hardest seat in the building. Faculty, budgets, accreditation, and programs all at once. The room that prepares you for the chair you actually want.

3

Deanovators

Deans, provosts & presidents

Where the decisions only deans face get made. With company instead of alone.

Join as a chair. Stay until you're the dean.
What you can only get here

We can't out-credential the accreditor. We don't have to.

☉

A standing room, not a cohort

The same 6 to 8 peers, matched to your exact role, every month, for as long as you stay. Not a five-day institute. Not a card you collect at a conference.

8%

Built for the calendar you have

Only 8 percent of deans say they have time for their own development. WIBE is built for exactly that. One hour a month. Everything else on demand.

✓

No one's permission required

No president's nomination. No institutional champion. No selection committee. A decision an academic leader can make, and fund, on their own.

◇

Specific to your world

Accreditation cycles, rankings pressure, corporate partnerships, donor relations. We speak the language of the business school, not higher ed in general.

13

Still here in month thirteen

When the dean search finally opens, the conference network you built last spring is long gone. Your circle isn't. That's the whole difference.

✦

Innovation brought to life

Workshops, speakers, and a network that help you think outside the box, in a room with the psychological safety to actually try.

Meet our founder
"I don't wait for doors to open. I build new ones."

For more than 20 years I worked with business school leaders across six continents. I saw a leadership world that was exclusive, slow to change, and closed to the people who needed a way in the most.

So in 2020 I built the room I couldn't find. A place where leaders in business education could get honest counsel from people in their exact seat. No waiting for a title. No nomination. No one's permission.

What started in 2020 has become WIBE, open to every leader in business education. The heart of it has never changed. No one should have to carry academic leadership alone. If you're reading this, consider it your personal invitation.

Lisa Leander
Founder & CEO
In their words

The proof is who stays in the room.

“

Academia can be lonely and isolating. WIBE gives me a real platform to build connections with other academics around the world.

Courtney Hatch
Associate Dean, Butler University
“

The most exceptional and specialized professional organization I've had the privilege to be part of. What I value most is the networking, the role models, and the learning.

Lan Ma Nygren
Associate Dean, Norm Brodsky College of Business, Rider University
“

An incredibly supportive, non-judgmental space where I feel comfortable sharing whatever is on my mind. I always walk away having learned something new.

Aarti Ivanic
Dean, University of Hartford
The room is here. For now.

The need for this room isn't going away. The room is.

Support built for people in your exact seat is getting harder to find, not easier. WIBE curates it for you. And there's room right now.

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