L. J. Bourgeois III

Education:  B.S., MBA, Tulane University; Ph.D., University of Washington 

At Darden since 1986, Emeritus Professor Jay Bourgeois has led the Strategy area and taught strategy, post-merger integration, and eastern philosophy. He was associate dean for international affairs and director of the Darden Center for Global Initiatives from 2004 to 2008, during which time he developed Darden's globalization strategy. For the 10 years in which he taught in Darden's six-week senior executive program, he was its top-rated instructor.  

Professor Bourgeois has coached CEOs and consulted more than 100 firms, governments and nonprofits around the world on strategy, mission development and post-merger integration, and conducted various seminars in strategic thinking. He has worked in several industries, including airlines, banking, computers, electronics, food processing, government, higher education, insurance, law, mining, oil exploration, public accounting, shipping and telecommunications. Clients include Standard & Poors, Disney Development Corporation, Bacardi, Qantas Airlines, Department of Homeland Security, Wolseley Plc and the Army Corps of Engineers. He is also an associate of the BCG Institute and a member of the Charlottesville Committee on Foreign Relations. 

Prior to joining the Darden faculty, Professor Bourgeois taught at the Stanford Business School, where he was director of the Strategic Management Program. Bourgeois received his Ph.D. in strategic management and international business from the University of Washington in 1978, where he wrote an award-winning dissertation about strategic decision-making in firms facing volatile environments. After receiving his MBA from Tulane University in 1970, Bourgeois was employed as a financial analyst in the corporate planning department of Dole Foods. He then held several assignments in the firm's Latin American operations, including new product project management, residential subdivision development, labor negotiations and manager of industrial engineering. Fluent in Spanish, Professor Bourgeois grew up in Venezuela. 

Professor Bourgeois authored Strategic Management: From Concept to Implementation, and Corporate Marriage Counseling: Strategies for Integrating Acquisitions, as well as over 90 cases and articles in various management journals and books. Bourgeois' research is required reading in leading doctoral programs on strategy in the U.S. and Europe, and he has been recognized by the Journal of Management as among the top 150 out of 25,000 management scholars globally over the past quarter century. He is currently writing The Tao of Strategy: How Seven Eastern Philosophies Can Help Solve 21st Century Business Challenges, which is due out on August 31, 2021. 

Bourgeois serves on various nonprofit boards, was on the vestry of St. Paul's Memorial Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, and participates in various nonprofit and Mardi Gras organizations in New Orleans. He and his wife, Maggie, divide their time between Charlottesville and New Orleans.