Rosamond Ivey, HBA ’82, LLD ’18, said she has become “a bit of a cynic” about leadership today – a concern that helped draw her to support a new Chair in Leader Character at the Ivey Business School.
A generous $2.5-million gift from Rosamond Ivey, matched dollar-for-dollar through the Dean's Chair Match program, has established a $5-million endowed Chair. This investment will help the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership attract exceptional academic leadership, expand its capacity for research, teaching, and outreach, and further strengthen Ivey’s position in character-driven business education.
The investment grew out of her conviction that leadership needs a broader sense of responsibility, and that business education has a role to play in developing it.
“There isn’t any corner of our society – culturally, economically, socially, internationally – that wouldn’t be enhanced by people having a greater vision of the common good of society,” she said. “Anything that brings people together to think about common humanity is important right now, and I think understanding leader character is important.”
Why leader character matters
What crystallized Ivey’s thinking, she said, was reading a 2020 Intouch magazine article about the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership. As she learned more about the Institute and its 15 years of research on leader character, her conviction deepened.
“It’s not obvious, or doesn’t seem possible, or appropriate, that you can teach good character,” Ivey said. “What do you mean, teach character? That’s just too subjective. But the Institute has proven, with its evidence-based research and programming, that you can.”
She said that realization also changed how she understood the Institute’s place within business education.
“The more I learned about what the research actually shows, the more enthusiastic I became about the impact of, and possibilities for, the Institute in disseminating its expertise,” she said.
She also came to see the Institute’s work as distinctive within business education, where ethics, sustainability, and purpose are often discussed, but character is treated differently.
“Teaching ethics is not what character leadership is about,” Ivey said. “It is so much more than just people being able to say, ‘Well, I know that this is right and this is wrong, so therefore I’m on the right side of ethical.’”
That difference, she said, is part of what makes the Institute's work stand out.
“What the business school is creating here through the Institute is actually teaching something that’s new,” she said. “It really is new.”
Dusya Vera, PhD ’02, professor of strategy and general management and executive director of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership, said that distinction is central to the Institute’s work.
“We are profoundly grateful to Rosamond, whose own insight captures what sets this work apart: leader character is not a synonym for ethics. It runs deeper, shaping the quality of decision-making and the practical wisdom a leader brings to every choice, every day,” said Vera.
The next step for the Institute
The chair, in Ivey’s view, is a crucial next step: a way to give the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership
the academic leadership and long-term capacity needed to turn its research into broader impact through teaching, partnerships, and knowledge mobilization.
Her gift reflects a family connection to the business school that spans generations. Her grandfather, Richard G. Ivey, helped champion the vision of a business school at Western University, served as the inaugural Chair of the business school’s Advisory Committee, and played an important role in its early fundraising and development. In the years since, successive generations of the Ivey family have supported the School through philanthropy, leadership, and service. For her, this gift is both a continuation of that legacy and an investment in the School’s future.
Acting Dean Nicole Haggerty said the gift will help position the School for that future.
“Rosamond's gift is a significant investment in the future of the Ian O. Ihnatowycz Institute for Leadership,” said Haggerty. “The creation of this chair will help us attract exceptional academic leadership and strengthen the School’s global position in character-driven business education.”
Ivey sees the endowed chair as an essential step in the Institute’s next phase of growth.
“The endowed chair is a launch pad for bringing the Institute’s ambitious vision to reality,” Ivey said.
Asked what she hopes the gift will ultimately produce, she returned to the stakes she sees for business itself.
“Business exists within social, cultural, and economic contexts,” Ivey said. “Exceptional business leadership should always take the greater good for society into account.”
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