A Closer Look: Sandy Scott, MBA 1991

Nothing in her life prepared Sandy Scott for her current job. Then again, perhaps everything did. Officially the director of major capital projects, Scott is effectively the construction boss for the GSB. The Schwab Residential Center was built on her watch, and what's be-come known as The Link, the addition to the Littlefield Building, will soon go out for bids. Scott's job description is simple: Get the project done and keep everyone happy. Oh sure. The question is: How did a nice person like Sandy Scott wind up in a job like this?
       Just the fact that she turned up in business school was a surprise. Suburban housewife, mother of four, avid volunteer, Scott brought a decade of leading and working for nonprofits into the GSB classroom. If anyone wondered at the presence of this 40ish Junior Leaguer, it didn't take long to realize that she was no admissions mistake. The smart, energetic Scott immersed herself in the activities of the Public Management Program, so much so that her classmates voted her the hands-down winner of the Arbuckle Award at graduation, an honor one of her kids missed witnessing because he was off at college himself.
       "Negotiation was probably the most helpful course I took in business school," says Scott. And it stands to reason that breaking up squabbles between her two sons and two daughters has also seen her through some testy times. Making nice with faculty discomfited by pile drivers outside their windows, deans and donors worried about cost overruns, staff forced to move their offices to escape the din of construction, students all but donning hard hats to get to their rooms, construction workers and architects fighting over contracts and hues of paint--it's all in a day's work to the seemingly unflappable Scott. She's no pushover, though. When costs surged skyward on a new loading tunnel under the old GSB building, a project preliminary to building The Link, Scott blew her top. "I'm not building a half-million dollar cement hole in the ground," she said, canceling construction and postponing further building until spring.
       So how did a nice person like Sandy Scott wind up in a job like this? Simple. "I need a lot going on," she says.