Investing in Iowa's Future
Mar 01, 2019 7:00 AM
Bruce Harreld, President of University of Iowa
Investing in Iowa's Future

Bruce Harreld became the 21stpresident of the University of Iowa on November 2, 2015. He received a Bachelor of Engineering degree from Purdue University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Harvard University.

President Harreld served on the faculty of Harvard Business School from 2008–2014, with dual appointments to the entrepreneurial and strategy units. He was faculty chair of the Building New Businesses in Established Organizations program. As a faculty member, he taught in numerous executive programs in Cambridge, Qatar, Mumbai, and Shanghai. He also has been an adjunct professor at Northwestern University in the Kellogg School of Management, developing the first-ever MBA course on Strategic Use of Information Technology.

President Harreld has served in several corporate leadership positions. As senior vice president and division president of Kraft General Foods, he led the strategic unit that formulated strategy and executed acquisitions for this multibillion-dollar company. As president and board member of Boston Market Company, he, along with five other partners, led the organization from 20 stores in the Boston area to over 1,100 stores nationally. As senior vice president of IBM, President Harreld worked with the CEO and senior management team to chart the organization’s transformation from near bankruptcy, led the business transformation team that streamlined operations and reintegrated the global organization, and led the strategy unit that was responsible for the formulation and execution of the company’s overall strategy. President Harreld has also served as a consultant, advising public, private, and military organizations on leadership, organic growth, and strategic renewal, including serving as manager, vice president, and member of the board of the Boston Consulting Group.

President Harreld is the author or coauthor of numerous articles and book chapters in such journals and magazines as the Harvard Business ReviewCalifornia Management Review, and Financial Executive, and books and monographs such as Leading Sustainable Change: An Organizational Perspective(Oxford University Press, 2015) and Core Curriculum Strategy Reading: Executive Strategy(Harvard Business Publishing, 2014). He has also authored or coauthored several case studies for Harvard Business Publishing.

President Harreld has received several awards, including the Accenture Award for best business article of the year and the Distinguished Industrial Engineer and Distinguished Engineering Awards from Purdue University.