Schulich To Honour Business Leader Ratan Tata
TORONTO, ON – Friday, June 20, 2014 – Ratan N. Tata, Chairman Emeritus of one of India’s largest conglomerates and a global leader in corporate social responsibility, will receive an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from York University during today’s Spring Convocation ceremony for the Schulich School of Business.
Tata is Chairman Emeritus of Tata Sons, the holding company of the Tata Group, a global enterprise comprising more than 100 operating companies in seven business sectors ranging from communications and IT to energy, chemicals and consumer products. The company, which has revenues of approximately $100 billion US and more than 540,000 employees worldwide, championed the development of the Nano, the world’s most affordable car, and the Swach Water Purifier, which provides affordable clean drinking water to millions of people in the developing world.
As chairman of the Sir Ratan Tata Trust and the Sir Dorabji Tata Trust, two of the largest private sector philanthropic trusts in India, he has also helped improve the lives of millions of people by providing access to child nutrition, clean drinking water, low-cost housing, and education. The Government of India honoured Tata with one of its highest civilian awards in 2008 and he was recently awarded the Honorary Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the British Empire.
Schulich Dean Dezsö J. Horváth said he is pleased that Tata, who has a strong relationship with the School, will receive his honorary degree from York University at the business school’s Convocation ceremony.
“Ratan Tata is one of the great global business leaders of the last half century, and he has accomplished it all with the utmost integrity and humility,” said Dean Horváth. “Ratan Tata embodies many of the core values that Schulich believes in and many of the business principles we teach our students, including a global mindset; a belief that business can help improve society; and a commitment to excellence and innovation.”
Tata sits on the School’s new India Advisory Council, which provides guidance in the ongoing development of Schulich’s MBA in India program, based in Hyderabad. In 2010, Tata delivered the inaugural public lecture for the Thomas J. Bata Lecture Series on Responsible Capitalism, co-hosted by the Schulich School of Business and the Bata Foundation.
“Ratan Tata was an early advocate of capitalism for the long term, realizing his companies could prosper in the long run by caring for the communities in which they operated,” said Dean Horváth.
About Schulich
Known as Canada’s Global Business School™, the Schulich School of Business in Torontois ranked among the world’s leading business schools by a number of global surveys. Schulich’s MBA program is ranked #1 in the world by Corporate Knights, the world’s largest circulation magazine with an explicit focus on Corporate Social Responsibility, and #2 in the world by the Aspen Institute (a Washington, DC-based leadership think tank) in global surveys that identify which schools are doing the best job of preparing future business leaders for the environmental, social and ethical complexities of modern-day business. Schulich’s MBA program is also ranked among the world’s leading schools by The Economist, Forbes, Bloomberg Businessweek and Expansión (a Time Warner publication based in Mexico City). The Kellogg-Schulich EMBA program is ranked #1 in the world by The Economist, #5 in the world by The Wall Street Journal (as part of the Kellogg global network of EMBA partner schools) and #1 in Canada and 26th in the world by the Financial Times of London. For complete ranking details, please visit www.schulich.yorku.ca.
Global, innovative and diverse, Schulich offers business programs year-round at its state-of-the-art complex at York University; at its Miles S. Nadal Management Centre located in the heart of the Toronto’s financial district; and at its new campus in Hyderabad, India. Schulich also operates a number of satellite centres in Beijing and Shanghai, China; Mumbai, India; Seoul, South Korea; Mexico City, Mexico and Sao Paulo, Brazil. Schulich offers undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate business degrees that lead to rewarding careers in the private, public and nonprofit sectors, and has more than 25,000 alumni working in over 90 countries. The School pioneered Canada’s first International MBA (IMBA) and International BBA (iBBA) degrees, as well as North America’s first ever cross-border executive MBA degree, the Kellogg-Schulich Executive MBA. In addition to Schulich’s Master of Finance and Master of Accounting degrees, the School recently launched one of the world’s first Master of Business Analytics degrees. Schulich’s Executive Education Centre provides executive development programs annually to more than 12,000 executives in Canada and abroad.
