Dean's Office - Darden Leadership - About

Scott C. Beardsley

University of Virginia Darden School of Business Dean and Charles C. Abbott Professor of Business Administration

Education: B.S., Electrical Engineering, Tufts University; MBA, MIT Sloan School of Management; Ed.D., Higher Education Management, University of Pennsylvania; MSt in Practical Ethics (expected 2025), University of Oxford 

Scott C. Beardsley is serving a record third term as ninth dean of the University of Virginia Darden School of Business and a chaired professor in Strategy, Ethics and Entrepreneurship. A 26-year McKinsey executive in Belgium and NY, he now acts as CEO of the financially self-sufficient UVA Darden enterprise (Foundation and School). An innovator, builder, strategist and talent developer, he has worked extensively with CEOs, boards and top teams of complex organizations globally to thrive in the face of technology and strategic discontinuity. His impactful leadership has included: helping clients grow, transform and capture tens of billions of value in mobile, broadband and digital services; digitally transforming Darden; incubating McKinsey’s climate change special initiative; and making Darden the first business school to be carbon neutral and top-ranked in CSR/sustainability. He led the development of UVA’s first AI institute and lifelong learning institute. He has served on pan-UVA task forces on athletics and the 2017 riot.

At Darden since 2015, as chief fundraiser, he has helped raise a record $610+ million, including historic eight- and nine- figure gifts, bringing endowment assets to almost $1B. During his tenure, Darden has achieved record rankings: No. 1 Princeton Review overall (composite 2023, 2024); No. 1 global public (Financial Times, 2024); No. 2 overall global (Economist); No. 3 Bloomberg Businessweek; and No. 1 public (Poets & Quants, Bloomberg Businessweek), faculty (Princeton Review, Economist), educational experience (Economist, seven times) and general management (Financial Times, four times). Poets & Quants named Beardsley “Dean of the Year” in 2020. He secured UVA board approval for a new masterplan and led ─ from vision to completion ─ the opening of UVA Darden DC Metro, a campus enabling new EMBA, MSBA and Part-Time MBA programs; a $150 million Darden hotel and conference center; an adjacent arboretum and botanical gardens; and alumni hall. Since 2015, Darden has almost doubled enrollment resources, hired 65 faculty (on a base of 70), and is building residential housing.

Until 2015, he was a client-serving senior partner and elected global board member at McKinsey & Co., where he was among the fastest ever to rise to senior partner. He held some of the firm’s most senior roles: strategy practice leader; leader of all global talent learning and leadership development; co-chair of the global committees that elect partners and senior partners; and leader of global knowledge initiatives in broadband, technology and telecom. Trained as an electrical engineer, he worked in semiconductors for AMD and Analog Devices and at Tufts as a physics teaching assistant.

One of McKinsey’s most prolific global thought leaders, Beardsley wrote about the rise of nontraditional leaders in academia in his 2017 book, Higher Calling (UVA Press). He was an editor of MIT Sloan Management Review, has published widely in Stanford Innovation Review, McKinsey Quarterly and Wall Street Journal, and presented at Davos, Concordia, Financial Times and OECD. An expert in strategy, stakeholder management, regulation and leadership development, he researches and teaches on maximizing human potential; CEO leadership; and technology/AI ethics and regulation.

Beardsley holds a doctorate in Higher Education Management with distinction from University of Pennsylvania, which awarded him the 2022 Distinguished Alumni Award. He earned an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School with high faculty honors as the Henry S. Dupont III Scholar and Sloan Management Review Scholar, and a B.S. in electrical engineering magna cum laude with Tau Beta Pi and Eta Kappa Nu (as President) honors from Tufts University. He is currently pursuing research on AI toward a Master in Practical Ethics (part-time) at Oxford’s Pembroke College.

He serves or has served on multiple boards, including: McKinsey; Focused Ultrasound Foundation; Sands Capital (lead director); Altec, Inc; UVA Darden; American Chamber of Commerce in Belgium (chair); and Carlyle (advisor).

A competitive tennis player, he played Varsity for Oxford, supports the UVA Men’s Tennis NCAA championship team, and has played ITF World Senior Tennis Championships (40+ world doubles ranking #188 in 2015). From a family of educators and dairy farmers, Beardsley was born in Maine and grew up in Vermont and Alaska. He is a French and U.S. citizen, is bilingual in English and French, and resides on the Lawn at UVA’s Academical Village, a UNESCO World Heritage site. He and his wife Claire Dufournet of Annecy, France, have three sons and a golden retriever, Lawnie.