Silicon Valley Executive Center’s Dennis Lanham Appointed to Premier Executive Education Board
SANTA CLARA, Calif. (May 17, 2023)
The Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University is pleased to announce the appointment of Silicon Valley Executive Center’s Dennis Lanham to the board of the global Consortium for University-based Executive Education (UNICON).
UNICON has been the preeminent global reference organization for executive education for more than 50 years, serving 115 member schools in 30 countries. It aims to help member schools with developing unique products and services and providing outlets for collaboration. The organization’s primary activities include industry conferences, research, benchmarking, sharing of best practices, staff development, recruitment, and networking among members. This is the first time that Santa Clara University will be represented on the UNICON board, which has included members from other prominent institutions such as Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.
Lanham, the Leavey’s School of Business’ senior assistant dean of executive education, is a seasoned learning and development executive leader with more than 20 years of experience in university-based executive education, global member services, and program management.
“Dennis has established himself as a leader who strategically reshapes, constructs, and scales organizations,” said Ed Grier, Dean of the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University. “Over the past six years, he successfully navigated through a difficult pandemic, leading the Silicon Valley Executive Center to its most successful year ever in 2022. This appointment is a reflection of the Center’s growing influence, as well as its bright future as we look to expand our offerings within and beyond Silicon Valley.”
Under Lanham's leadership, the Silicon Valley Executive Center (formerly the Executive Development Center) has extended its reputation for high-quality professional programs for executives across a wide variety of industries. The Center is well known for its distinct, impact-based, and mission-aligned offerings that cultivate professional and executive communities, foster career mobility, facilitate better business outcomes, and promote social justice.
Over the past six years, Lanham has grown the Center’s legacy programs like the popular Certified Equity Professional designation (CEP) offered through the Center’s Certified Equity Professional Institute, the only certification body for equity compensation professionals. He has also added many new offerings to the Center’s portfolio which align with the University’s mission of creating a more humane, just and sustainable world; such as the renowned Black Corporate Board Readiness and Women’s Corporate Board Readiness programs that have helped nearly 100 women and Black executives secure board positions with top-tier firms across the globe, as well as certificate programs in Heroic Leadership and Social Determinants of Healthcare. Additionally, Lanham has grown the base of corporate clients for the Center’s customized learning experiences that help business leaders, managers, and professionals within organizations be better equipped to tackle the speed and complexity of growth in today’s business environment.
“Our Center is at the forefront of executive education and the intersection of industry and social justice,” said Lanham. “Executives around the world are grappling with how to solve the greatest social challenges in modern history while still generating financial equity. Our duty as business education professionals at Santa Clara University is to help them in that process. Serving on the UNICON board is an opportunity for me to share my insights with industry peers and impact the wider executive education landscape, as well as to leverage collaboration with other universities to keep our Center on the cutting-edge of program development and delivery.”
Before joining the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, Lanham led executive education centers at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Georgia State University. A native of Dallas, TX, Lanham holds a B.S. in Applied Behavior Analysis from the University of North Texas, an M.S. in Higher Education from Florida State University, and an MBA from Georgia State University. In addition to his career in executive education leadership, Dennis is an adjunct professor in the Marketing Department at Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business, where he teaches Executive MBA, evening and online MBA, and undergraduate business students.
About Santa Clara University
Founded in 1851, Santa Clara University sits in the heart of Silicon Valley—the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial region. The University’s stunningly landscaped 106-acre campus is home to the historic Mission Santa Clara de Asís. SCU has among the best four-year graduation rates in the nation and is rated by PayScale in the top 1 percent of universities with the highest-paid graduates. SCU has produced elite levels of Fulbright Scholars as well as four Rhodes Scholars. With undergraduate programs in arts and sciences, business, and engineering, and graduate programs in six disciplines, the curriculum blends high-tech innovation with social consciousness grounded in the tradition of Jesuit, Catholic education. For more information see www.scu.edu.
About Leavey School of Business
Located in the heart of Silicon Valley, one of the most dynamic business environments in the world, the Leavey School of Business combines academic excellence in the 450-year Jesuit tradition, with an energetic, innovative spirit that typifies the region. Santa Clara University’s Leavey School of Business offers one of the nation's best graduate business programs ranked No. 13 Executive MBA by U.S. News & World Report, No. 19 ranked Evening MBA by U.S. News & World Report, and No. 3 ranked Online MBA by Poets&Quants. Our Undergraduate Business programs rank in the Top 10% in the nation, ranked No. 49 by U.S. News & World Report. For more information, visit www.scu.edu/business.