Rich Lyons is the 12th Chancellor of the University of California, Berkeley, beginning his tenure as the first undergraduate alum to serve as Chancellor in July 2024. Prior to serving as Chancellor, he was the Associate Vice Chancellor for Innovation and Entrepreneurship from 2020-2024, leading the development and expansion of innovation and entrepreneurship campuswide. Lyons also served as the Dean of UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business from 2008-2018.
Lyons received his BS degree from the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley in 1982 and returned to campus in 1993 as a faculty member at the Haas School of Business after receiving his PhD in Economics from MIT and following six years on the faculty at Columbia University. In 1998, he was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award, Berkeley’s highest teaching award.
Asked at a meeting among colleagues what his “six-word memoir is,” Lyons responded with “long-term love affair with ideas, learning.” As an alum and contributor since shortly after leaving Berkeley in the 1980s, he delights in mixing it up with alumni and working together to steward this remarkable university, truly one of society’s most important, and distinctive, assets.
