Wharton fills four senior admin posts

Wharton recently filled four senior positions, a move officials say will strengthen various divisions of the school.

Jonathan Cutler was named director of MBA admissions and financial aid, Ira Rubien is the new executive director of communications, Leonard Lodish is now the vice dean of the program for social impact and Douglas Collom was named executive director of Wharton West.

"We are very fortunate to add so much talent at one time to our senior leadership team," Wharton Dean Thomas Robertson said in a statement on the Wharton Web site.

Cutler, a Wharton alum with a background in marketing and management said the Wharton program has only gotten better since his days as a student at Penn.

Cutler was senior vice president of marketing for Aramark Healthcare's North American group, president of Lindi Skin, and worked at Johnson & Johnson.

"We are looking for the future business leaders from the most diverse candidate pool all over the world," Cutler said of the MBA admissions process.

Rubien, graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, and Carnegie Mellon University, has a background in marketing and brand-building.

He was the director of marketing brand management for the Nursery and Care division of Graco Children's Products, senior brand manager of Mattel, an internet brand director for Addis and an Internet marketing manager for Headland Digital Media in San Francisco.

Lodish will step down from his position as vice dean of Wharton West to assume his position in the Program for Social Impact. His job will be to expand Wharton's leadership in social progress and responsibility.

He said he will start the new job by seeking advice from faculty.

"I need to understand what the students and faculty are capable of, in order to make Wharton grow," Lodish said.

Lodish, who is a graduate of Kenyon College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has done research and consulting work in entrepreneurial marketing, Robertson wrote in an e-mail.

Collom's primary role is to strengthen Wharton's name on the west coast.

A University of California, Los Angeles, and Stanford University graduate, Collom has served as an adjunct professor at Wharton since 2002. Collom is also a corporate partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati, a technology law firm.

*This article was updated on 1/23/09 at 5:45 p.m. to reflect that fact that Doug Collom is still a corporate partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich and Rosati.

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