Alumni Profile: Daniel Weiss of Lafayette College

Today: Recently named the 16th president of Lafayette College, Dan leaves The Johns Hopkins University, where he has served as dean of the Krieger School of Arts and Sciences since 2002. Dan earned a master's and a Ph.D. in art history from Johns Hopkins and also an MBA from the Yale School of Management. He is an award-winning professor as well as the author of numerous articles and four books on the art of the Middle Ages. Dan's new position is effective July 1.

Daniel Weiss

At Booz Allen: Joined Booz Allen in 1985 as a New York-based associate working primarily in Financial Services, leaving in 1989 as a senior associate.

As Dean, you provide guidance all the time. What would you tell a student wanting to join Booz Allen? I would say no matter your professional direction, it's hard to imagine a better opportunity than Booz Allen. I went on to be a professor — and Booz Allen made me a better teacher, a better dean and a better administrator.

Booz Allen provides a forum to learn about yourself, to test yourself every day, and to develop analytical skills, the ability to work collegially and to be an articulate representative of your ideas. Whether you want to be a CEO, a professor, or almost anything, it's hard to imagine a better experience.

Looking back, what's the first thing that comes to mind about your Booz Allen experience? My four years at Booz Allen were probably the most intellectually stimulating years I spent anywhere. There are several things I learned there that have served me well ever since.

I learned it is possible to create an environment that is dedicated overwhelmingly to intellectual quality and merit. I was overwhelmed by the purity of that spirit at Booz Allen — if you don't have the right answer or aren't able to do the work, it isn't a good place to be. But if you can do the work and do it well, there is limitless opportunity.

There isn't much in-between at Booz Allen. There's not a lot of bureaucracy. There's not a lot of room for people who want to hide behind their desks. To me, there was something extraordinarily invigorating about an environment that was so dedicated to and focused on the work.

What's an example of that "purity" of spirit? At a team meeting during my first two weeks at the firm, a junior researcher got into a debate with the partner on the progress of the work. It seemed to me that this recent college graduate was being very self-destructive, but it turns out he was right, which the partner readily acknowledged — and the project moved on. That was something I experienced quite a bit throughout my four years at Booz Allen.

Any other lessons from your time at Booz Allen? To create an environment that seeks excellence, it is essential to put the right people in the right positions. Booz Allen does that exceptionally well — and the client interests are always served.

On a more personal level, I learned how to translate thinking and good ideas into a compelling and clear presentation. Learning how to do that made me a better teacher: I rarely used any notes when teaching because I had learned how to organize my thoughts logically and coherently. I've worked hard to try to build on those experiences.

So why leave? I joined Booz Allen having already earned a Master's degree in Art History. I learned about Booz Allen while at the Yale School of Management, and became very intrigued about the opportunities that working at a high-powered strategic consulting firm would bring to me.

So I figured whatever I did next, I would learn a lot, which was certainly the case throughout my time at Booz Allen. At the same time, I increasingly developed the view that I wanted to be in a university environment as both a professor and an administrator. You could say that I migrated into that role.

An unusual path — How did the firm handle that? The way Booz Allen handled my leaving speaks a great deal to the firm's virtues. I remember going into discuss my decision to leave with Walter Jewett, then the New York Managing Partner, knowing that what I was about to tell him was something he hadn't heard before. So I told him I wanted to return to school to get a Ph.D. in Art History.

Walter was both intrigued and skeptical. He said to follow my dreams by all means, but urged me not to resign immediately, and to take a leave of absence instead, and assess things after a year. He said if school didn't work out, Booz Allen would always have a position open for me.

So a year later, I called Walter, and told him that he could close my office — and that I was indeed happy with my decision.

That memory sticks with me. It was incredibly generous and very meaningful. And it was a springboard to my academic career.

Any favorite or memorable moments at Booz Allen? There are many, but what sticks out is my first engagement as project manager. I was a newly minted senior associate at the time, and our client was a Philadelphia savings & loan, which in the late 1980s was in considerable financial duress, as were so many savings & loans at the time.

I was supervising a team of half-dozen or more professionals with two partners in charge — and the whole project revolved around my ability to manage this distressed client and our team. We worked very hard to come up with recommendations and insights that we thought would help the client. We wrote an excellent report that I presented before the senior client.

It was a home run. And it was the moment I realized that Booz Allen had given me what I needed: the total experience of working under a lot of stress to come up with the right answer, coupled with the high degree of satisfaction in making a successful presentation and going on to do good work for the client.

At the end of that presentation, the client asked us to do another year. I ran the project for that entire time.

So I have just started at Booz Allen — Any advice for me? People who succeed at Booz Allen have an ability to learn quickly and to work with others. That's a contrast to people who are really smart, but smug and are wedded to their own ideas; they don't do well at the firm.

So it's important to possess a kind of intellectual suppleness and an abiding curiosity. Every project is going to be different, as will the people you'll be working with, so if you have a real interest in people and in learning new things, you're well suited to succeed at Booz Allen.

profile posted January 31, 2005