John Anthony Quelch (born 1951) is a business school academic, administrator, public servant, corporate director and consultant. He is the Lincoln Filene Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School, where he teaches Marketing to senior executives on the Advanced Management Program.
Recent co-authored articles include: “Bringing Customers Into The Boardroom” (Harvard Business Review, November 2004), “How Global Brands Compete” (Harvard Business Review, September 2004), "Building And Valuing Global Brands In The Nonprofit Sector", (Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Spring 2007), "Governance In the Public Sector", (Directors & Boards, Third Quarter, 2008), "An Exploration of Marketing's Impacts on Society: A Perspective Linked to Democracy" (Marketing and Public Policy, 2008) and "How To Market In A Downturn" (Harvard Business Review, April 2009).
Quelch received his BA and MA from Exeter College, Oxford University, where he was an Open Scholar in Modern History. As a Thouron Scholar, he earned an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, then an MS from the Harvard School of Public Health and finally a DBA from Harvard Business School.
Quelch's first academic post was as a visiting instructor at the University of Hawaii. He was subsequently appointed assistant professor at the School of Business Administration (now the Ivey School) of the University of Western Ontario. In 1979, he returned to Harvard Business School as an assistant professor. He became a tenured professor in 1988 and was appointed the Sebastian S. Kresge Professor of Marketing and Co-Chair of the Marketing department in 1994.
In 1998 he was appointed as Dean (with Vice Chancellor status) of London Business School. During his tenure, revenues and student enrolments increased 50% over three years, faculty numbers increased 30%. A network of twenty-five alumni clubs and six international advisory boards was established, corporate sponsorships increased dramatically, and the yield on MBA admissions rose from 57% to 73%. In 2001, London Business School received the Queen's Award for Enterprise and was ranked number eight business school in the world by the Financial Times.
Quelch returned to Harvard in 2001 as Senior Associate Dean for International Development overseeing the establishment of a global network of research centers. Between 2006 and 2008, he served as Senior Associate Dean responsible for coordinating the planning and execution of Harvard Business School's 2008 Centennial celebrations. He has also served as a director of the Harvard Business School Publishing Company.
In 2009, Quelch was on sabbatical in Shanghai as the La Caixa Visiting Professor of International Management and Chairman of the Academic Advisory Council at the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).
Professor Quelch is known for his teaching materials and innovations in pedagogy. His case studies have sold over 3.4 million copies, third highest in HBS history. In 1995, he developed the first HBS interactive CD-ROM exercise (on Intel's advertising budgeting process). In 1999, he developed and presented a series of twelve one hour programs on Marketing Management for the Public Broadcasting System. His Marketing Know:How blog, accessible at www.quelchblog.com and published by Harvard Business School Publishing, is also available in Chinese and Vietnamese.
In 2002, Governor Jane Swift of Massachusetts appointed Quelch to be Chairman of the Board of the Massachusetts Port Authority, overseeing three airports, waterfront real estate and the seaport of Boston. In this pro bono role, he also chairs the strategy and services subcommittee of the Massport board.
In an additional pro bono role, Quelch serves as Honorary Consul General of the Kingdom of Morocco for the New England region. His long-standing ties to the Middle East resulted in the book, Business Strategies For Muslim Countries (Prentice Hall, 2000).
Quelch has substantial governance experience as a non-executive director of public companies in the USA and the UK. He is the longest serving non-executive director of WPP plc, the world’s largest marketing and media services company. He also serves as a non-executive director of Alere, Inc. He served previously as a director of easyJet plc, Pentland Group plc, Pepsi Bottling Group, and Reebok International Ltd.
Quelch also serves as a board member of Americans for Oxford, as an international advisory board member of British American Business Inc. and as honorary chairman of the British American Business Council of New England. He is a member of AT Kearney's global business policy council, a member of the Council On Foreign Relations, a companion of the British Institute of Management, a fellow of the International Academy of Management, a freeman of the City of London and a member of the Worshipful Company of World Traders, an honorary fellow of both London Business School and Exeter College, Oxford, and a seven time faculty fellow of the World Economic Forum.
Quelch has worked as a consultant, seminar leader or conference speaker in more than sixty countries. He has assisted companies as diverse as American Airlines, Beiersdorf, Colgate-Palmolive, Barclays, DeutschePost, GE, Intel, Nestle, Novartis, Procter & Gamble, Samsung, Sinopec, Unilever, and Walt Disney.
In 2006, Quelch was named by The Sunday Times as one of the "Top 25 Britons who call the shots in America". In 2008 he received the annual leadership award of the British American Business Council of New England.
Both keen tennis players, John and his wife, Joyce Huntley, divide their time between their homes in Massachusetts and Maine. In addition to the USA and UK, John has lived in Australia and Canada.
