Profile: David L. Finegold

Professor David Finegold is a former dean of the School of Management and Labor Relations, a position he assumed in 2006 and served for a five-year term. As dean, Professor Finegold led the creation of several successful new degree programs, including the interdisciplinary Master of Business and Science, the first Rutgers-wide degree that is designed to prepare individuals to help bring innovations to market. He has spearheaded wider efforts to build a workforce development system for New Jersey’s bioscience sector by bringing education and industry together from across the state (www.bio-one.org). He was also the architect of the $5+ million Bio-1 partnership that helped strengthen ties between New Jersey education and training institutions and life science employers.

Professor Finegold most recently held the position as Rutgers' senior vice president for Lifelong Learning and Strategic Growth Initiatives, a position he will conclude in April 2013. As senior vice president, Profesor Finegold has helped to deepen our ties with both India and China. He secured one of the first Obama-Singh Knowledge Initiative grants to help foster partnerships between Rutgers and leading Indian universities and has built strategic alliances with the South China University of Technology to launch our joint new Innovation College. At the same time, he has helped spur greater cooperation among our continuing education units to create a wide range of new educational offerings for New Jersey residents of all ages.

Professor Finegold is a leading expert on skill development systems and their relationship to economic performance and corporate governance. His two main current research projects focus on: 1) Skill Development for the 21st Century Workforce – focusing on the rapidly evolving education and training system of India and China, and 2) Building Sustainable Organizations – focusing on governance of capitalism in the global economy and the emergence of alternative organizational forms to the for-profit public corporation.

He is the author of more than 80 journal articles and book chapters and has written or edited six books, including Are Skills the Answer? (with Colin Crouch and Mari Sako), Corporate Boards: Adding Value at the Top (with Jay Conger and Ed Lawler) and BioIndustry Ethics (Elsevier Academic Press, 2005).

Prior to joining Rutgers Professor Finegold was a professor at the Keck Graduate Institute (KGI) of Applied Life Sciences in Claremont, CA, where he helped to build the first college devoted specifically to creating a best-in-class professional science masters program. He graduated summa cum laude with a BA in Social Studies, from Harvard University in 1985, and was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford University,where he completed his DPhil in Politics in 1992.