Poole Pack Profiles: Meet Vikas Anand

Despite a long career working with diverse groups in academia and international business, Vikas Anand has gained some of his sharpest insights on humans in unlikely settings: watching animals in the wild.

On a trip this summer to his native India, Anand — Poole College’s associate dean for academic programs — visited lakes and mountains, where the soaring elevations inspired down-to-earth thoughts about people.

On a jungle safari, he observed nature’s melting pot at a small pool of water where monkeys, deer, peacocks and other birds gathered.  

“My reflection was that those wild animals have no problems coexisting peacefully, even in the desert where water is scarce. To me that was a very moving picture — you can have peace with creatures very different from you,” Anand says. “Humans keep creating differences among themselves. And there we were looking at different species that coexisted.” 

Anand himself has excelled at coexisting among different groups, moving among varied fields in his career — engineering to business to academia — and from India to the U.S. in the 1990s.

The analytical thinking skills he developed through engineering and physics were an advantage when he worked for a Mitsubishi subsidiary and traveled around the world to large companies. He was an exports manager and global trader before focusing on marketing and strategic planning.   

“I’m very proud of my engineering background,” Anand says. “It gave me a way of thinking…and helped me quickly make judgment-based decisions, which has helped throughout my career.”

Anand eventually pursued an advanced degree focused on international business with the goal of becoming a CEO for a big organization. “But somewhere along the way, I thought I could make a better impact in academics,” he says. 

Since then, he’s made an impact as a researcher, professor and administrator.

He came to the U.S in 1994 — his first time in the country, where opportunities were most promising — to earn a doctorate in management at Arizona State University.

“I was really worried about whether I would fit in. Culturally, the U.S. is very different from many other parts of the world…There was some discomfort. At the same time, the sheer joy of learning made everything else less relevant,” Anand says.   

His eagerness for learning drove him to work up to 16 hours a day as a doctoral student.

“There was some discomfort. At the same time, the sheer joy of learning made everything else less relevant”

“I just had a blast. I was very poor as a graduate student, but other than that, I would call that one of the best parts of my life,” he recalls. “I had some extraordinarily good faculty whose main focus was that you were doing good work and developing in your thinking.”

Anand continued to develop his thinking — and to lead students and colleagues to do so — for 22 years at the University of Arkansas’ Sam M. Walton College of Business. There he taught, managed MBA programs and headed the management department before becoming executive director of MBA programs.

When he accepted the Poole position in 2021, he was an empty-nester, and the timing was good to relocate. “For me, one of the drivers always is not just what is, but what can be. And I saw a lot of potential at NC State,” Anand says.

In a role that oversees undergraduate and graduate programs, career services, executive education, global programs and marketing, he has broadened the potential for Poole students. 

“I work with a really good group of people. Looking at ways we can serve the students better is a passion for me,” he says. “It begins with programs that add value for them in terms of career placement.”

He and his colleagues have added value in these and other ways:

• An undergraduate concentration in business analytics
• A graduate certificate in sustainability 
• A blended delivery option, online and on-campus, for professional working MBA students, who can build a network and connect in person with faculty and students

“We’re constantly talking to employers. They give us a good idea of how students rate in terms of skills. We get great ratings there,” Anand says. 

“For me, helping launch students into careers which benefit them and make an impact is huge,” he notes. “To see the impact we can make on students and then the mark they make on the world is one of the most meaningful things for me.”

Outside of NC State, Anand’s life brims with other meaningful things: Travel. Photography. Reading. Spending time with his children, both musicians in graduate school, whom he raised while becoming a single parent. 

Anand has read the biographies of 28 U.S. presidents. Most memorable to him? Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower and their pivotal involvement with the atomic bomb and World War II military campaigns.

“I have a lot of respect for people who make decisions based on what they believe to be right rather than what’s ideological. Those two stick out. They haven’t gotten the credit they should have,” he says. 

For all his interests, travel might offer both the greatest escape and the most intense engagement.     

Anand is drawn to the potential to see exotic birds, jackals, bears, crocodiles, tigers, elephants and other diverse creatures that all fit in somehow.

“Going in the jungles is just amazing,” he says. “If you turn off the motor of your Jeep and just sit there, the jungle talks to you. It’s probably one of the most peaceful places you’ll find.”