What are the chances of an Israeli-born ballet dancer ending up as business dean at the University of Saskatchewan? That is Daphne Taras’s story, reflecting a career packed with improbable twists. Ms. Taras, recently appointed dean of the university’s Edwards School of Business, moves to Saskatoon from Calgary at a time when Saskatchewan is basking in economic renewal. Ms. Taras, 53, comes with strong credentials as a teacher of industrial relations, which should serve her well in a province steeped in the tradition of prairie co-ops, Crown corporations and labour unions.
Did you know when you took undergraduate political science, you’d end up as a business school dean?
Never. And I actually entered York University as a classical ballet chick, a fine arts major. I’m one credit short of finishing a dance degree there.
I’m not much of a long-term planner, so I go with opportunities. As they say, opportunity favours the prepared mind. If you are just scanning for good stuff, it doesn’t matter if it is in ballet, poli-sci, labour relations or as dean – there are always great career holes that can be filled.
There are some people who start out with a passion for what they do and they stick with it their entire careers, but I’m not one of them. I’m one who worked really hard to find a way. Whenever you’re blocked, you find a way.
Have you ever worked in Saskatchewan before?
No. Every single person in Saskatoon, when they learn I just moved here, says, “Oh, are you rejoining your family?” or “Where are you from in the province?” But I say, “No, I really have zero reason to be here except that the city is at a takeoff point.” They look really skeptical. But my first message to Saskatchewan is: “Get over it. People are moving in.”
In this province, they absolutely think [the population influx] is just people coming home and that is enough of a victory for them. But there are people who move to where success is and they don’t need a family reason – they move for opportunity.
So the economic takeoff was a big reason you applied for the job?
For me, yeah. I spent 25 years in Toronto and 25 years in Calgary, and with that experience, there is a nice sense of when a city reaches a tipping point. You just know it’s poised and this province is at that point.
For a business school dean, aren’t you an odd duck academically?
I am. In the U.S., there are a lot of deans of business schools who are colleagues of mine in the field of industrial relations. We have the managerial skills and we are very sensitive to labour relations. A lot of us get involved in being associate deans and helping run places.
It makes a lot of sense, except there is this notion in Canada that to be a dean, you have to come out of finance or economics. In the U.S. there are a lot of us, and in Canada I’m now one of the few.
Has your career in business schools been affected by your specialization?
There is always the worry when you bring people in from labour relations that they might be too radical for a business school. Even if they are just slightly left, they may be too radical. But that’s not the way I managed my career. Within my own discipline I’m very mainstream. I’ve done my whole career in a business school and I have an MBA. I can talk the talk.
Didn’t I read that, at the University of Calgary, you once used deception to spur business students into organizing themselves like union members?
You have to have cojones to walk into a class and know you are deliberately going to aggravate the students. Well, we did it with four classes of 60 students. If you can do that, you can do anything to business students.
So you antagonized them so much, they organized?
Yes, but without being nasty. I was really apologetic that their professor had been suspended but, unfortunately, I’d taken over the class and we’d all have to live with it. And I’d changed the course outline. “You are going to have to suck it up, because I have to mop it up,” I said. I rehearsed it so it was a combination of being totally compassionate and patronizing as hell. That combination was so aggravating to them. “Let me explain to you why I can’t listen to you any more,” I said.
