University of Texas at Dallas – Naveen Jindal School of Management professor Dr. David L. Ford has recently been named a Dallas Business Journal 2016 Minority Business Leader Awards honoree.
Dr. Ford is currently in his 40th year of teaching at UT Dallas, where he is a professor in the Organization’s, Strategy and International Management Area at the Jindal School. His specialties include leadership development, workplace diversity and organizational culture change and assessment. “It’s nice when you hear that you’ve been a good mentor and that you may have helped someone’s life a bit,” Ford commented. “I’ve been fortunate to get some positive feedback in my career.”
Throughout his career, Dr. Ford has been committed to increasing minority representation in the business education world, be it students, faculty or administrative leaders. As part of his commitment, Dr. Ford is involved with The PhD Project, an organization working to increase diversity in management by increasing the diversity of professors in such classrooms. In 1994, when Ford and other leaders formed The PhD project, there were only 297 black, Hispanic and Native American professors in business schools across the country. Today, that number is roughly 1,300- more than four times what it was just twenty years ago.
The PhD project is an opportunity for minority leaders in business to create a network of support, particularly in helping doctorate students become faculty, and in faculty members becoming administrative leaders. “Nothing like this program existed when I received my PhD,” commented Ford.
Ford has committed himself to the philosophies of the PhD project, recruiting and becoming a mentor for a number of PhD students. Carliss Miller, a doctoral candidate of international management studies, credits Ford as the reason they came to the Jindal School.
Ford was also involved in developing the Executive Development Institute for the National Black MBA Association and was a member of the academic curriculum committee for the National Forum for Black Public Administrators’ Executive Leadership Institute.
Dr. Ford was one of twenty-three honorees selected by the Dallas Business Journal for the Minority Business Leader Award, out of more than 130 nominated individuals.