Latest / Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast / Episode 475: Texas, Technology, and Talent–How Dean Todd Milbourn Sees the Future of SMU Cox

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Episode 475: Texas, Technology, and Talent–How Dean Todd Milbourn Sees the Future of SMU Cox · Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Foreign. Welcome to the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. I'm your host, Graham Richmond, and today's episode is a special one. We're sitting down with Dean Todd Milburn. He's the dean of the SMU Cox School of Business. We're going to talk about leadership, the future of management education, and why Texas has become one of the most dynamic environments for business talent anywhere in the world. We'll cover everything from artificial intelligence and finance to energy corporate governance, and what prospective MBA and master students should know about positioning themselves for success at SMU Cox, let me give you a quick bio on Dean Milburn before we bring him out here. So Dean Todd Milbourne is the dean of the SMU Cox School of Business and a nationally recognized scholar in corporate governance, executive compensation, and financial economics. Prior to joining smu, he held senior academic leadership roles and taught at leading business schools, where his research and insights helped shape conversations around how firms are governed and how leaders are incentivized. As dean of SMU Cox, he's focused on strengthening the school's academic excellence, deepening its ties to the Texas business ecosystem, and preparing students to lead in an era of rapid technological and economic change. So welcome to the show, Dean Milburn. It's really a pleasure to have you.
• 1:32
  Speaker B: Hey, Graham. Delighted to be here, and thanks for having me.
• 1:35
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, pleasure is totally mine. I was really looking forward to this conversation. There are a lot of sort. A lot of ground that I want to cover, but I want to start just with a little bit of background. So I know that I shared a little bio at the top of this episode, but I would just love to hear kind of in your own words about the journey that led you to this role as dean at SMU Cox, and maybe even more broadly, like, what drew you to management education and what motivates you in this work?
• 2:00
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, no, it's. It's always funny listening to your own bio. I have been, at the end of the day, a lifetime academic and kind of. I wouldn't say I fell into it, but found the love. Not expecting that. I wanted to be a professor coming out of college and certainly never thought, hey, I'm going to be a dean of a business school one day. I went straight from undergrad into a PhD in Finance program at Indiana University. Coming out of undergrad, I knew I loved economics. I thought finance was interesting. Money was certainly something that I was always sort of curious about and investing. And really it was. The journey became much more organic that while I was in the program and starting to take the course and learn and realizing that I had a deep passion for the study of finance and in particular, more of the corporate side, how businesses use finance to make better decisions, how do they motivate people? And so I really focused on that as both my teaching and research while I was there. And since finishing up my PhD in 96, I have been on a faculty in London at the London Business School. I was up at the University of Chicago for a year, and then most recently before taking the helm here, I was at Washington University in St. Louis for 25 years. I've always enjoyed the research. It's a painful process at times, but I've always enjoyed the research and the kind of the thought leadership side. But I've always had teaching in my DNA and doing things to augment the student experience, both in the classroom and through program design, kind of slowly but surely brought me into more administrative. And so Wallow Washu eventually became department chair, where you're kind of leading the group and new initiatives like things like a master's of finance program. And then I spent better part of a decade in the dean's office there, chargeable faculty and research and programs. And that's really where I got to cut my teeth with a bit of the leadership side. The opportunity kind of leading to ending up here. And now, you know, eight months into the role at smu, Cox is this opportunity emerged about a year ago. It is the only opportunity that I pursued. And the more I learned about the school, the university, and things I'm sure we'll chat about later as we go forward, the economic environment that surrounds the business school here in Dallas. I was all in and I fought like crazy to get here.
• 4:14
  Speaker A: Yeah, it's really. I mean, it's an interesting journey. And, you know, I have to ask you now that, you know, you've. You kind of have had all this experience and exposure to kind of, you know, shaping, you know, programs and working in a dean's office now as dean as well in this role. I got to ask you, I mean, every conversation in higher education right now includes the letters A and I. I don't even want to say AI because it's like every, you know, it's sort of everywhere you go. But from your perspective, like, how is artificial intelligence reshaping management education? And how should business schools be preparing students to work with AI rather than, like, compete against it?
• 4:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, I'm, I'm glad you mentioned to compete against it. You kind of stole my punchline, really. Higher education, when AI first came out, it Was what are we going to do to confront how are we going to stop it? How are we going to know when people are writing their cases or their term papers up? With AI, we are, thankfully, and we're not alone, but we're leaning heavily into it. Here at smu, Cox is truly leaning into. We've got to make sure that all of our students, whether they're coming out of our undergraduate or coming out of our graduate program in particular, are fully adept with the full slate of tools. With AI, what can they do to truly augment their expertise and their skill set to make them more powerful? Clearly, AI is significantly more powerful than when the Internet coming out. If we back up, I'm old enough that all of a sudden we had Lotus Notes that eventually we all converted to Excel. People were a little bit scared, hey, we don't need our abacus anymore. We may not need our time value of money tables. Slowly but surely people pick it up, I think by faculty, my staff, and clearly the students demand it all. We're leaning really heavily in that we want to make sure that you are expert in something, whether that's finance, whether it's marketing, whether it's the strategy path that's going to take you into consulting. But how are you going to leverage up your abilities and your actions that you take by using the tools of AI. So we're infusing it into everything we do. There's a couple courses that will be sort of deep dives into the mechanics of it, but it's really touching every single class that we. And I think that's what is going to be the sort of secret sauce to best prepare our students as they go out and become leaders in the business community is how are they going to harness the power here to really lift themselves up their companies, but all those around them.
• 6:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. And I think, you know, you and I were at a conference about, well, not quite a month ago, I guess, and there was a lot of discussion around this. And I think, you know, everything you're saying rings true. I mean, I think that the MBA in particular, and actually most management education degrees are so well suited to giving people tools to be able to, you know, the sort of judgment skills, leadership skills, all these things that I think they used to be called soft skills, now we're calling them durable skills. But, you know, it was so important as we get into kind of this, the role of AI, and it makes total sense that you guys are leaning into this. I did. You know, you mentioned when you talked about coming to this Role. You talked a little bit about the activity around the university in terms of the economic environment. And so I have a couple of questions about Texas, actually. So the first is about kind of finance. So, you know, Texas seems, you know, in this era to be a real net importer of talent, particularly in finance. I just wondered if you could talk a little about some of these developments. I was reading about the Texas Stock Exchange that's coming into play and just broader finance trends in the state. Is Texas emerging as a new what we'd call a center of gravity for finance in the US how are the students at SMU Cox benefiting from that momentum?
• 7:46
  Speaker B: Yeah, you hit the nail on the head with respect to thinking about the next best and greatest financial center. I think not just in the US but globally is absolutely going to be Dallas. The movements are already there. The firms, as you mentioned, we have sort of. Every financial services company already has a base or a hub here. And more and more these firms are now choosing to actually make their headquarters here. For instance, Charles Schwab came in, sort of came in first as this is a satellite, this is sort of a main area now. They're big hq. They have this beautiful building just outside of Dallas downtown that is phenomenal. Every financial services firm wants to be here. Goldman Sachs is about to move into their new building here. In another year and a half, they will have more reps at Goldman in Dallas than they will have in New York. The same is true for JP Morgan. We're seeing it with Morgan Stanley. And so the financial services is a huge piece, but I would say just one part of the massive economic growth that's sort of taking place around here. We chatted about, you know, what drew me here. One of the things besides just being already a really good school with great aspirations and momentum was the economic environment. And many people have heard me. This feels like economic candyland. There are so many companies here in every industry from defense tech to energy, et cetera. But finance is particularly strong. And as we as Dallas itself is building that up, it really does play to our core strengths that we have here at the Cox School of Business. We're in the midst of our strategic planning process, actually pretty far along in those efforts. Obviously the work will be come in. You got to execute, you got to get everybody on board and go forward. But our advantage strengths are really in finance, real estate and energy finance. And so we're well suited to. We're already sort of fueling the talent that's going into these places. But we have core Strengths that we're going to be able to lean into. And that becomes really symbiotic with the environment that is nearby. You mentioned the Texas Stock Exchange where you know, because in Texas fashion and I'm still trying to get my vernacular down where I can say these things with a straight face. I'm getting closer. Is Y' all street, our play on Y' all street from here. The Texas Stock Exchange is a brand new exchange. They're going live. They've got corporate listings that are there. But they have also brought in the competition. The rest of the world in particular New York has looked at it. NASDAQ has moved their office into Dallas. NYSE has taken their Dallas out. Their office, excuse me, out of Chicago and move that into Dallas. So we're going to have three stock exchanges here in concert with the Texas business courts as being a really business friendly basic tenets of sort of free market enterprise. That is the sauce they're trying to put together. And that's really exciting not just for the economics of uplifting sort of all boats in this region, but to be the business school sitting in that is absolutely spectacular.
• 10:46
  Speaker A: Yeah. And you actually. So that's a perfect segue because I was going to ask you a little bit about corporate governance, you know, because we just keep hearing about Texas increasingly attracting companies that may have previously incorporated elsewhere. You know, Delaware is the place that sometimes people think of as where. Where companies would have gone in the past. And I just wondered, you know, that's got to be playing to. You know, it's got to be a great thing for SMU Cox as well. But what does that mean? Because you also do a lot of corporate governance education and research at SMU Cox.
• 11:14
  Speaker B: Yeah, this one. You know, selfishly I couldn't be more excited about the corporate governance initiatives. Here is. I've studied incentives. I sit on a couple of boards in the asset management industry and a couple companies that have gone through acquisitions. So to see it happening in real time is spectacular. There's a great phrase, a little bit of a play on the Brexit as England was making its decisions vis a vis the EU of Dexit with a D is trying to add a little bit of fuel to the fire and build up some momentum is can we get companies to leave being incorporated in Delaware, exit there and to come to Texas? And you're seeing that groundswell taking place. We're leaning really heavily into that. In fact took early meetings between signing the contract to be the next dean in March before I started on June 1st we had several conversations with the Cox School of Business and the Dedman Law School here at smu. They're really strong in corporate law. We have a spectacular finance group that is really strong on the corporate finance and corporate governance side. And so we're in the early days of building up a corporate governance initiative that would actually eventually lead to a research institute where it's not only the thought leadership from faculty on the research side where we can lean in, but it's really an opportunity for those students to play a huge role in these moves that are taking place.
• 12:34
  Speaker A: Yeah. So lots going on. I mean, the other thing I wanted to ask about, while we're just on the subject of Texas, and I promise this is the last Texas themed thing, but this is about energy and sustainability. You know, the energy sector remains a major employer in Texas smu. Cox recently launched a new master's degree focused on energy. And so how do you see the energy landscape evolving? And how is the business school again positioning students to lead lead through the sector's ongoing transition?
• 12:59
  Speaker B: Yeah, you know, as I alluded to earlier, one of our areas of strength besides finance and real estate is in the space of energy finance. We have a lot of folks that go into the banking side supporting the deals that are there. There is so much excitement around the energy boom that is taking place. You know, with all of the data centers and everything we've already touched on AI, they need some pretty significant power that is there. You need to be in a space where to do it. Texas in general has a huge comparative advantage in this space in particular because of all of the natural gas reserves that we have. It's been very well established that the existing grids for electricity anywhere in the nation can't support that. Just glut of demand that these data centers and the AI centers have for energy is they are literally building right next to where they can just tap the natural gas directly so that they can invest in their own power plant from there. That's a big piece of what I think is going to lead to the continued growth as Dallas was a reason we're the fastest growing economy in the country, that I think that momentum stays for a very long time in that spot. We do a lot of things. As you mentioned, we have a master's of energy in business at the Cox School of Business. We're also looking to work in an interdisciplinary disciplinary way that smu, sort of our mothership that's here, both the humanities and sciences at the Dedman College here, as well as our Lyle School of engineering bases in sort of petroleum geology and the engineering side of energy. And so we're looking at some collaborative master's level programming where a student can go over and take the engineering courses, can go over and actually take a course from a rock star petroleum geologist that's in that space, so that you could come out not just knowing the finance, which we're incredibly adept at training you in that speed, but you're going to know a bit of the science, you're going to be able to read the seismic charts. And I think what's happening with this energy boom, not just in the. In Texas, but in the US we're going to be able to provide that town in a way that I think is unique to SMU and SMU Cox.
• 15:06
  Speaker A: Yeah. And you're harping on something here that, you know, I think a lot of the very best business schools in the world have, you know, the sort of parent institution that's behind them that allows for some of this interdisciplinary stuff to take place. And so, you know, you're talking about energy, but I think, you know, obviously, you know, how does being embedded in a comprehensive university shape the business school experience for the Cox students? Even if, you know, energy aside, all these other disciplines that are probably, you know, that they're surrounded by as being a part of this broader institution.
• 15:34
  Speaker B: Yeah, no, having a strong university around you is what's going to enable us to really accelerate. It's true. At any university, as you look across, whether, you know, your law school, your School of Engineering, your School of Arts and Sciences, and the business school I've always alluded to, there's sort of a ceiling and an anchor effect. Whichever one of those schools is the best in some sense becomes the ceiling for where the other schools to which they could aspire and the other ones that might be lower on sort of national prestige or visibility become a bit of an anchor of what you can do. A major component of our strategic plan is how can SMU Cox help the ascendants of all of smu? And I think where we're in a unique place to do that as a business school is we can be the coordinating mechanism, the focal point, if you will, through very pointed and strategically designed interdisciplinary programs where it's going to make our own students greater and make it the best place to study business in the country, but it's also going to help raise, sort of with that tide, the other boats in the ship. We have a phenomenal university and we're, I think we're in that sweet spot of the right scale and size. We're big enough that we can have an independent school of engineering with multiple disciplines. We're big enough that we've got a standalone law school and the arts and sciences. And we're big enough at Cox that we can be awesome in real estate and finance, in marketing, in technology and business from here. But we're still of a modest enough scale that we can be incredibly nimble. We've been able to launch a handful of new programs already this fall. Most universities move at glacial speed, you know. No, no sort of mal intent related to global warming. But my line has been I'm trying to melt this glacier as quickly as possible, take down these impediments and see what can we do. That is true. Truly going to be the biggest value add for students such that they get the right roi. And interdisciplinary is a huge way to do that.
• 17:30
  Speaker A: Yeah, that makes a ton of sense. So I have to ask, you mentioned you've been at SMU Cox for I think you said just about eight months or so now at this point and I wondered is there something that you've encountered on campus like a course, a conference, even a student club or a tradition that has surprised you and do you have a favorite spot on campus and you can't. Your office doesn't count even though that's probably where you are a lot.
• 17:54
  Speaker B: There's only so many people that could fit in the office from here. When you think of the campus here, you can't help but start with its physical beauty. We sit on an amazing piece of real estate with beautiful architecture and beautiful buildings I inherited when I got here and started on June 1st. They'd only been a year in a brand new business school building and I've been in lots and lots of business school school buildings. There's not a nicer, more modern one in the country currently. Now that arms race will always lead that somebody will one up you eventually. But these things take some time and universities elsewhere are struggling to get some cash flow together so that'll give us a little bit more time. I want to give sort of an answer of the set of things to do and for me the most striking thing in coming to Dallas and coming to SMU Cox is just the sheer magnitude or multitude, if you will, if you will, of opportunities to engage with business. There is always something going on whether it is a conference with TexCap and the sort of the Texas Blockchain Council put on a one day conference talking about y' all street talking about fintech. Our students were able to attend this. You're interacting with business leaders who are trying to make these things happen. There is every week there are two, two or three that I go to and there are at least four or five I have to say no to because you just can't be. I don't have a digital air, an AI twin yet. We're working on that technology to be able to attend these. I just like, for me, my favorite thing to do is to go on the ground level of the business school. When this building was designed and I saw sort of the, you know, the marketing language around the fundraising, we want this building to be a 9 to 9 building. And my first thought was what the heck is. Is that they wanted people to feel and live and engage in the business school from 9am until 9pm I said, well, that's. That sounds cute. We'll see if that works out. This building is always humming. I always park right on the other side of the building. I walk downstairs where we've got a market and a bagel shop. That's fantastic. The energy there is thriving, whether I'm coming in at 7 in the morning. And even if I'm leaving at 10:30 or 11 now, it's not that people, the same set of people are grinding 18 hours a day. A day, but just the energy that the students have and where that goes between the breakout rooms. All the faculty are in the same building and so that keeps people close. Our staff are predominantly in the same building. That energy is something that is pretty hard to replicate at other schools. And I've been on a lot of other campuses, you know, and as I've gone on and on about the beauty of the campus and that this is economic candyland, let's also be very clear, we are right in the heart of the, of the economic activity that's here and that's where being one of the great urban universities in the country is going to be a core advantage for us.
• 20:40
  Speaker A: Yeah, it sounds really special. I guess one thing I'm wondering is if we think about what's happening today, we're in this sort of period of rapid technological change and disruption. And I wonder, are you optimistic about the opportunities ahead for the business world and specifically for graduates of smu? Cox? And if so, what gives you confidence in today's students? Students? Because we read a lot in the press about, oh, all these things are changing what's going to happen. And I'm hearing a ton of optimism from you over the course of this conversation. And everything that's happening In Texas and at SMU in particular. So, yeah, maybe just comment on that. What gives you this sort of optimism?
• 21:18
  Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, if you want doom and gloom stories, you can always find a set of stories. Occasionally they might even have some real facts underlying them. They can call for the doom and gloom and that the end is near. I'm an eternal optimist. I've always been more of a glass half full and glass half empty. In fact, I'm a glass 90% full kind of guy. But with that, mine is data driven. I mean, clearly the industry and technological disruptions that are going to come from AI are going to be massive. There are going to be huge swaths of certain industries and jobs in those that used to be incredibly sort of enhancing, purposeful and financially viable that are going to change dramatically. But I think the data overwhelmingly calls that this is now our industrial revolution of, you know, of the 2000s. It is going to create in my mind more jobs than it destroys on a net basis. Now the trick is we don't have a crystal ball to know what those are going to be. Where are people going to be able to need to pivot? So there's a few things we're doing and it's a bit more in sort of just. Just the DNA and the culture that we're trying to establish is you've got to make sure you've got some core competencies where AI is the augmentation to what you do, not training up in something that's very clearly going to be replaced and much more efficiently from there. One way to get sort of that ability to be nimble is to. And that's an area of strength for us here at smu, Cox, is to think like an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur by definition has to take chances. You've got to take risk adjusted bets on what you're doing. Any entrepreneur I have ever met, including all of the ones that were successful, have all failed way more often than they've succeeded. But the trick is, which set of those has sort of the grit, the resiliency and the nimbleness, if you will, that when you do get knocked down, when that idea fails, how quickly do you pivot and identify what to do next? For me, thinking like an entrepreneur is almost the ultimate risk management strategy, if you will, of how do I put myself in a spot? If something changes, where am I going to pivot? And so that's a big piece of where we're going. The other thing, and this has kind of emerged over just, you know, all the conversations you take internally and externally. When you're onboarding yourself from the outside. I heard someone say, you know, parts of AI are really going to democratize IQ points. And as somebody that was a math major as an undergrad, and I've joked with our president, who was also a math econ guy before he became a finance professor and ultimately, you know, president extraordinaire. As you know, you still have this huge book that had solutions to every possible integral you would ever need to, you know, to solve. And you would flip through and say, all right, this one looks close. I can then grind through and do the answer. That's now a three second exercise where the two and a half seconds is just to type in what you're trying to say, solve the value of the person, the emotional intelligence, your social iq, if you will. I think that's going to be a piece that I don't see AI displacing. So where can you be the one that can still have the conversation, can still engage in the relationship building, but As a graduating MBA, I'm not going to go manage say 10 analysts. I might have two analysts and 100 AI agents doing things. Your management skills are still going to be the same. Some of them can just work longer hours and you don't have to be, you know, as nice in your conversations there.
• 24:51
  Speaker A: Yeah, fair. That's a fair point. I guess. So, you know, talking about MBA grads and you know, obviously folks who tune in to this podcast, many of them are actively considering going off to get an MBA or in some instances a specialized business masters. And so I just wondered, like, do you have any advice that you would give applicants who want to put their best foot forward in the SMU Cox application process? And, you know, is there something that distinguishes the strongest candidates for Cox?
• 25:19
  Speaker B: Yeah, you know, this is a lot of years of looking at applications, advising students, should I go get the mba? How do I get past this thing? I mean, a set of things come to mind, I think as you, once you first off, make sure, go explore lots of schools, go see them, go to the events, see what's really happening, not just what's on the web with the website. Come see our building. We're going to sell you on that right away when you get here. But as you engage on the application, I think some best practices, a lot of people want to lead with their resume. I start a bit more with your kind of scorecard. Where are you heading? Why now and why Cox? Don't try to make us guess as you're going through hundreds and hundreds of application, connect the dots for us of why you've truly done sort of the deep thinking and deep dive of this is right for me in my career now. And here's why I think I'm great for Cox and importantly, why you think Cox is good for you. I mean, I think the strongest applicants are going to be those that have done a bit of homework. And we all know this when you've, you know, you've gone out and tried to find a job. So as I was trying to fight to get this one, I didn't come in with a playbook and say, hey, here's what I used to do at Living lbs, or here's what I did at Washu. You come in and say, what's unique about Dallas, its network, what I can glean about its culture and tie that to why do you want to be a part of it? And so I think it's part of that, that sort of connection. And I think a couple other things. You know, be specific about what you're looking for in terms of the roi. Are you making a career pivot? Are you trying to accelerate your career? Because that is going to change a bit of maybe, which is the right program for you to go through. And people matter. We're of a back to that, you know, sort of scale and size. We are sufficiently big that we can place people and help you get into investment banking or consulting or the CPG side of the world. But we're small enough that we know everybody's name and story, help build that up. We value people. Right. The people who are here absolutely love this place. They wear the T shirt with the SMU Mustang on it. There's passion for it. If you take initiative and kind of convey what are your stories, choices that you've done, why do you want to be part of this team? I think those go a long way. It's a little bit of an off the top of my head, sort of laundry list of what I would love to see.
• 27:31
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, those are great pieces of advice, though. I mean, I really do think that when you're applying to business school. Yeah. This idea of, you know, being able to really quickly get the admissions reader into your storyline of, like, why you want to be there, what you're going to do next, how you're going to contribute and so on, all great advice. I'm sure all of our listeners are going to take that to heart. Dean Milburn, I really appreciate you taking time to join us today and for sharing your perspective on leadership education and the opportunities that are unfolding at smu. Cox and, you know, so just been a real pleasure to chat with you. So thanks for the time now.
• 28:03
  Speaker B: This has been great. And I should have said it earlier on, we now that we go way back, all the way back to Carlsbad in January, please do call me Todd in the future. But and for students to choose to come here, which I sure hope you do, you'll see that we're pretty personable. And that starts at certainly starts in this office.
• 28:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. I appreciate it so much, Todd. Well, thanks everyone for tuning in. Stay tuned for weekly episodes of the Clear Admit MBA Admissions Podcast. And if you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to subscribe. And we'll see you next time. Sam.