INCAE Business School in Costa Rica (Photo: Ricky Courtney)
Camelia Ilie
President at INCAE Business School in Costa Rica
“As women, we cannot wait to be chosen. We must actively build our competitive advantage. This entails developing expertise, seeking measurable outcomes, intentionally building networks, and cultivating a learner’s mindset. Vision, adaptive leadership, and resilience can serve as the foundation of our competitive advantage, making our roles more strategic to school boards.”
Camelia Ilie is President and Professor of Corporate Governance, Leadership, and Change at INCAE Business School. She has over 30 years of international experience in strategy, innovation, and financial management across Europe, the United States, and Latin America. At INCAE, she has served as Dean of Strategy and Institutional Affairs, Dean of Executive Education and Strategic Innovation, and Chair of the Leadership Center. She also led the creation of INCAE Online, an innovative digital learning platform developed in alliance with Emeritus, which today reaches more than 6,500 participants annually from 15 countries.
Women now make up roughly 30% of business school deans globally. What has driven that increase and what still limits faster progress? The increase reflects years of preparation, persistence, and structural evolution. More women have moved into associate dean and senior academic roles, and search committees are slowly expanding their definition of leadership readiness in academia.
At the same time, institutions operate in increasingly complex environments. Business schools today must navigate digital transformation, demographic shifts, geopolitical uncertainty, and intense stakeholder scrutiny. In such contexts, collaborative and adaptive leadership styles, along with the diversity of thought, are necessary as a foundation for greater collective intelligence.
However, progress remains slow, and the primary limitation is not talent. It has been widely discussed among colleagues in our industry that it is a design question. Many systems were created in times when leadership pathways were more linear and more homogeneous. Informal sponsorship networks, narrow evaluation criteria, and comfort with similarity still shape outcomes. If we do not redesign the structures that select and evaluate leaders, progress will remain incremental in all industries, not only in education.
‘Students learn as much from what they observe as from what they study. Leadership archetypes influence behaviour and future actions. When students see women leading complex institutions with clarity and rigor, the range of possibilities broadens.’
Women often reach the deanship through longer or less linear pathways. What barriers still exist? Women’s pathways are often longer because they are more scrutinized and less sponsored. Many women take on roles that carry responsibility but not always visibility. They invest heavily in building institutional culture, student experience, improving efficiencies, transforming programs and creating cohesion, work that is strategic but sometimes undervalued in promotion processes.
Another aspect that has been widely studied is the contradictory expectations regarding leadership styles. Women leaders are often expected to be empathetic yet firm, collaborative yet decisive, patient yet immediately results-oriented. Navigating these tensions requires emotional intelligence and resilience.
Why does parity in business leadership still matter, especially amid global debates over DEI? Parity matters because governance quality matters. Diversity of thought improves decision-making only when processes are designed to allow it to emerge. It is well known and studied that a leadership team that thinks in the same way may feel efficient, but it is vulnerable, it is less innovative, and it has more blind spots in decision-making.
The discussion should shift toward collective intelligence. It must be cultivated through diverse thinking and structures that promote psychological safety, constructive dissent, and role clarity.
We live in a time of increasing internal and external complexity. No single cognitive profile is sufficient to navigate that complexity. Institutions need strategic thinkers, executors, empathic listeners, scenario planners, and disciplined analysts around the same table.
Once women reach the deanship, what challenges persist? What advantages may emerge? One challenge is the natural association with authority. Women leaders are often required to repeatedly prove their competence.
Another challenge we do not address enough is the risk of overload. Women in top leadership are often expected to maintain the institution’s emotional balance while simultaneously delivering strategic transformation, and many still assume significant personal and family responsibilities alongside these roles.
Taking responsibility for our own leadership journey means learning to delegate with clarity, to trust strong teams, and to design structures that do not depend on constant personal intervention. We need to organize our agendas more strategically, protect time for reflection and long-term thinking, and establish boundaries that allow us to lead with perspective while we avoid exhaustion.
Yet there are also advantages. Many women leaders have developed adaptive leadership precisely because they have had to navigate ambiguity and complexity. They often create environments in which different perspectives can coexist. They are comfortable integrating performance and humanity, strategy and culture. In times of stress or change, this integrative capacity becomes essential.
How does greater representation of women in business school leadership matter for students and for the broader business community? Students learn as much from what they observe as from what they study. Leadership archetypes influence behaviour and future actions. When students see women leading complex institutions with clarity and rigor, the range of possibilities broadens.
More importantly, they understand that leadership is about anticipating the future and building institutions that responsibly serve stakeholders. Business schools help develop leaders. If gender parity becomes the norm in academia, it will increasingly become the norm in boards, C-suites, and entrepreneurial ecosystems.
What changes would most meaningfully move the share of female deans beyond today’s 30%? We need more structural, organizational and process reforms. Search criteria must prioritize transformation capability and proven leadership records over traditional trajectories. Sponsorship can be more formal and transparent leading to better succession planning.
We must also cultivate multigenerational thinking. As a well-known proverb reminds us, “A society becomes great when leaders plant trees whose shade they will never sit under.”
Finally, women must continue to invest in their own development and in building our competitive advantage. We must remain learners, build networks of support and challenge, design our own personal governance systems—mentors, peers, advisors—who help us grow.
Anything else you would like to add? I was born in a communist country. I know what limited possibility feels like. I know what it means to grow up in environments where independent thinking carries risk. Perhaps that is why I believe so deeply in institutions that cultivate free minds. Leadership is not only about position. It is about responsibility.
Parity is part of that responsibility. Beyond parity, our duty as educators and leaders is to develop individuals capable of critical thinking, foresight, resilience, and adaptability. If we design institutions that foster collective intelligence, we do more than increase representation. We strengthen the institutions and their sustainable future.
Next page: Isabelle Huault, Executive President and Dean at emlyon business school