Professor Ann Buchholtz happily receiving the Sumner Marcus Award in August.
Ann Buchholtz, a professor of leadership and ethics at Rutgers Business School, died Sept. 14 at St. Barnabas Hospital in Livingston from complications related to a recent surgery.
Buchholtz was a faculty member in the Department of Management and Global Business, but she was also strongly identified with the Institute for Ethical Leadership where she held the position of research director.
Widely quoted as an expert on ethics and corporate social responsibility, she impressed her colleagues as both a scholar and a cheerful and compassionate colleague. To students, she was not only a teacher instilling critical-thinking and leadership skills, she also was a mentor.
Rutgers Business School Dean Lei Lei described Buchholtz as a "tremendous asset to RBS and a wonderful colleague.”
"Her scholarship, love, graciousness, kindness, radiant smile and strong spirit will forever be with RBS and all of us,” Lei said. "She will be greatly missed.”
Distinguished professor Nancy DiTomaso, a colleague in the Department of Management and Global Business, was among many faculty and administrators who expressed sadness over the loss of Buchholtz.
"Ann was a deep thinker and a serious scholar who was well respected in her field,” DiTomaso said, "but she was also one of the most positive and supportive people one could ever meet to all of her friends and colleagues.”
In the spring, Buchholtz coached a trio of MBA students who captured the inaugural BNY Mellon Social Finance Prize, and she guided 18 other MBA students to the Aspen Institute’s annual Business and Society International MBA Case Competition.
She also received honors of her own. In August, she won the Sumner Marcus Award from the Academy of Management’s Social Issues in Management Division. The award recognized her teaching, service and her research, which was consistently published in the top management and business ethics journals.
James Abruzzo and Alex Plinio, co-founders of the Institute for Ethical Leadership, said: "Ann has been our close associate over the last five years. She contributed so much to our plans, research, programs and students. She leaves a great void, and we are saddened by this loss of such a wonderful person.
"But, rather than sadness, knowing Ann and her passion, she would ask that our work be imbued with her spirit."
Buchholtz joined Rutgers Business School in 2010.
