Meet Jon Levin, a member of the Class of ’94 who double-majored in English and math, was the winner of the 2011 John Bates Clark Medal for the most significant American economist under 40, and served as dean of the Graduate School of Business for the past eight years. Today, he becomes the university’s 13th president.
Levin’s first leadership position at Stanford came during his time as an undergraduate where he served as president of the Stanford Kayak Club and taught fellow students how to kayak on an often-full Lake Lag. Many weekends, he and his friends would head for the hills, discovering new places to climb, ski, and kayak. “In my mind, the intellectual part of Stanford has always been tied to the place, to being outdoors, to the sense of exploration of being in California,” he says.
Following a master’s degree from Oxford and a PhD from MIT, Levin returned to campus. In 2002, as an assistant professor of economics, he joined Prof. William Robinson, ’89, PhD ’95, MD ’96—then a Stanford fellow in rheumatology—for an adventure on the Kern River involving 54 miles of kayaking, largely through Class V whitewater. “You never run a rapid unless you can see a very clear line. Your partner’s helping you portage, and then holding your boat when you get in and launch. It is the ultimate in trust,” says Robinson, citing his confidence in Levin as one of the many reasons he embarked on the adventure.
Robinson believes Levin’s even-keeled approach to looking for a line down the river—“collecting oneself, clearly thinking about the situation, not letting too much emotion get injected, and then helping make decisions such that the group traverses the rapid in a highly successful and safe way”—will serve him well in the high-pressure situations that a university presidency can present.
🗞️: https://lnkd.in/gjju75ix
📸: Toni Bird/STANFORD magazine
