Gift to Focus on Ethical Leadership in Business

The University of Notre Dame has announced a major gift from Deloitte, a leading professional services organization with more than 50,000 professionals in nearly 90 cities throughout the United States and in India. The gift will be used to help establish the Notre Dame/Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership, a new academic center at the Mendoza College of Business that will focus on advancing ethical leadership in business, including research, thought leadership and the dissemination of practical ethics related content to the business community in the United States as well as around the world.

“Over many years, the Mendoza College of Business has built a strong reputation for excellence and business ethics, and we are deeply appreciative of Deloitte for stepping forward with this magnificent contribution that will give us the opportunity to greatly enhance and expand our programs,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president.

In making the gift, Deloitte cited Mendoza’s vision statement, Ask More of Business™, of which a chief tenet is a challenge to dare to place individual integrity at the heart of every business decision. Barry Salzberg, chief executive officer, Deloitte LLP, noted Notre Dame’s long-standing reputation and eminence in the area of character ethics and its alignment with Deloitte’s deep-rooted commitment to ethics and integrity as a key factor in the decision to collaborate with Notre Dame on this venture. “Our collective and shared values around the importance of ethical leadership in business make this a natural partnership.”

Carolyn Y. Woo, Martin J. Gillen Dean of the Mendoza College, described the collaborative effort in establishing the Notre Dame/Deloitte Center for Ethical Leadership as a unique and groundbreaking arrangement that could lead to additional collaboration across the University in a number of strategic areas.

“These two organizations share an abiding conviction that sustained business success relies on the values embodied by both the business itself and the individual character of its employees,” Woo said. “Deloitte’s generous gift will allow us to develop research and public discourse that we expect will provide significant insights into what makes a business leader truly great. This type of collaboration is vital to expanding our collective vision of business as a force that impacts the greater good of the human community.”

Michael E. Zychinski, chief ethics and compliance officer, Deloitte LLP, commented: “We are delighted with our collaboration with Notre Dame to develop this new ethics center. Deloitte and Notre Dame share a common vision related to character ethics and leadership development. The center will contribute to the continued development of quality ethics initiatives in the Mendoza College of Business and make a positive impact on the business community.”

As used in this document, “Deloitte” means Deloitte LLP. Please see www.deloitte.com/us/about for a detailed description of the legal structure of Deloitte LLP and its subsidiaries.

The Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame, currently ranked as the No. 1 undergraduate business school by Bloomberg Businessweek for the second year in a row, is a premier Catholic business school that fosters academic excellence while promoting the ideals of individual integrity, effective organizations and the greater good. The College offers undergraduate and graduate degrees, as well as both nonprofit and traditional executive development programs. Graduate degrees include the Notre Dame MBA, Executive MBA, Master of Nonprofit Administration and Master of Science in Accountancy.

The Notre Dame MBA is ranked No. 5 worldwide in Aspen Institute’s Beyond Grey Pinstripes, a biennial survey and alternate ranking that indicate the school’s success in integrating social, environmental and ethical issues into its program. The program also placed No. 1 for corporate social responsibility on the Financial Times Global MBA (2011) ranking of the top 100 global MBA programs.

/news_and_events/news_articles/article/9116/gift-to-focus-on-ethical-leadership-in-business