Anthony Davidson

Dean, School of Professional and Continuing Studies

Anthony Davidson is a visionary leader, growth agent, consultant, and award-winning educator who draws upon a distinctive combination of experiences as a dean, professor and entrepreneur to establish excellence and build consensus while generating new growth opportunities. He is recognized as a strategic thinker whose multidisciplinary expertise enables him to solve complex challenges using innovative approaches that align with organizational objectives.

After 15 years of teaching and developing curricula at major universities, he was recruited by New York University where he became the founding dean of the SCPS division of programs in business. Dr. Davidson promoted lifelong learning by building connections among education and industry at all levels, from graduate and undergraduate to postgraduate and executive. He developed rigorous, cross-disciplinary, globally focused on-site and online curricula that were attuned to market demands resulting in it becoming the highest-performing division in the school.

Subsequently Dr. Davidson moved to Manhattanville College where he redesigned its graduate and undergraduate programs, each with a new focus and specific career path geared toward current and aspiring business professionals. It led to the creation of a School of Business of which he became the founding dean. The international appeal of the new curricula convinced the government of the Dominican Republic to fully sponsor 60 high-performing Dominican students to go to his school for their graduate education. Dr. Davidson also created and launched a widely-acclaimed Women’s Leadership Institute with annual conferences and a certificate program designed by women for women.

In August 2016, following a national search, Dr. Davidson was appointed as Dean of Fordham University’s School of Professional and Continuing Studies and within 4 months launched a Real Estate Institute with an impressive advisory council comprised of leading, industry-leading professionals. In addition to three Master’s degrees that have received industry acclaim and market popularity, it currently offers graduate certificates and several professional certificates, and has plans to introduce graduate programs in the area of Hospitality and Hotel Management with a focus on their intersection with real estate. After just one year, Davidson’s strategies resulted in the school’s first year-over-year increase in revenue and enrollments in many years, a trend that has continued to date and, along with other growth initiatives, resulted in a doubling of the School’s revenues after just three years. Dr. Davidson is currently establishing a presence in the area of Allied Health expanding on the launch, in January 2022, of an MS in Applied Health Informatics out of Fordham London. The degree is now also offered in New York and online, and is highlighted by a residency course in St. Edmunds Hall at the University of Oxford. Dr. Davidson is the author or co-author of numerous invited presentations and papers and has been featured as an expert in articles and on many television and radio shows in segments dedicated to business, e-learning, education, and professional development. He has a BBA in Marketing, an MBA in Business Policy/Finance and a Ph.D. in Management and Systems Science. Dr. Davidson’s research in the field of Total Quality Management helped earn him the prestigious Literati Award for Excellence for outstanding paper of the year

He sits on a number of advisory boards and lists several teaching awards and a doctor of humane letters among his various honors.