| Bruce Magid
Title: Dean, Brandeis International Business School
Age: 62
Experience: 36 years
You don’t get to be the dean of an international business school by sitting home watching Rick Steves’ guides to Europe for armchair travelers. Bruce Magid, a Massachusetts native, jetted to Venezuela to work for the country’s government after receiving a graduate degree from the Tufts University Fletcher School for international affairs. He then joined Bank of America, moving from Venezuela to Brazil and finally to San Francisco, where he was the bank’s chief international economist. Since he had a PhD, he found his way into academia, eventually working as dean of the College of Business at San Jose State University, where he founded the Lucas Graduate School of Business and promoted a global focus at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. He has been the dean of the Brandeis University International Business School since 2007.
Q: You’ve started focusing on real estate in the business programs you offer. Was that your idea?
A: I’ll say this – it started under my watch. We realized about four years ago now that students needed to have specializations. Ed Bayone, who’s the former chief credit officer for BankBoston that later became Fleet, was teaching courses in real estate. He actually came to me and said there was tremendous interest among our students from around the world for more courses in real estate. And there are tremendous opportunities in the real estate sector for students that have the skill set. So we decided to create a real estate specialization … and have it be practitioner-oriented.
Q: Have you been able to differentiate it from real estate programs offered at other area colleges?
A: Every student has to take an international real estate course in order to be part of the specialization, and I suspect that’s unique among the real estate programs around the United States. But as far as I know we’re the only ones [requiring it]. Now we’ve actually bifurcated it. You can now take an international real estate course on mature markets, i.e. Europe or the United States, and/or emerging markets. We have students from over 60 countries, so this is very powerful for them. The third differentiator is that we have what we call field projects … where teams of students will review the real estate plans of companies for a specific project, and then they go to the company and make a presentation … especially on the risk and the revenue involved. Some of these companies, we’ve had students make presentations and the people from the firms have called me after and said, ‘We’re going to have a much more successful project because your students came and made this presentation for us.’”
Q: How did the program fare through the Great Recession? Did interest wane?
A: We have about 300 students, both undergraduates and graduates, taking real estate courses, and we have about nine courses now, and it’s really grown. When we launched it we were still in the throes of the recession. The nice thing about real estate is it’s cyclical. The first students that were hired from the program were hired around the U.S. and the world for workouts and restructurings. And then, in 2011, it started changing. Because the commercial real estate industry had laid off so many people, as suddenly the demand popped up for new projects, there were some great entry-level opportunities for students.
Top Five Memorable Meals:
- Katmandu, Nepal – Sitting on the terrace of Boris’s café eating dumplings and admiring the view of the Himalayas.
- Jerusalem, Israel – Walking along the Cardo (main street) in the city’s Jewish quarter munching on a falafel sandwich filed with french fries.
- Rio de Janeiro, Brazil – Eating feijoada and drinking caiparinhas on Copacabana Beach.
- Havana, Cuba – A gourmet meal at LA Guardia, an elegant Palador (private restaurant) overlooking the city sky line.
- Boston – As a native Bostonian, rooftop dining at Legal Seafood Harborside, enjoying fresh seafood and views of ocean and city.
