Anijo Mathew has never been satisfied with the status quo. The entrepreneur first went to school to become an architect, but quickly realized he cared more about people’s experiences within the buildings than how they were constructed. He went on to study design and computing, building startups and later teaching about the intersection of technology and human-centered design.

This fall, Mathew will take over as dean of the Iovine and Young Academy. IYA wasn’t just searching for a dean with a strong resume in entrepreneurship and design, but someone who could collaborate across a diverse campus, according to Juan Santizo, associate dean of finance and administration at IYA.

Being multi-faceted in his education is his strong suit, Mathew said, calling himself a “cross-cutting collaborator.”

“I don’t enter a room by saying I know the answer,” Mathew said. “I enter a room saying, ‘I don’t know the answer, but we can work together to figure it out.’”

Although Mathew has only been at IYA for a week, Santizo said his first impressions of the new dean are that of a mindful, thoughtful person who welcomes other people’s ideas.

“I have no doubt that this will be such a really smooth transition,” Santizo said. “He really knows what the Academy is and what we need, and I don’t feel like we’ll have a bumpy ride.”

Mathew comes from the Institute of Design in Chicago, where he was a faculty member for 18 years and served as its dean for four years. He said IYA will allow him to continue what he was doing at ID, but have it be amplified.

“When USC reached out in February, [it] was exciting because it’s one thing to be a [dean] of an institution that’s 90 years old, and another to be the dean of an institution that was founded 13 years ago,” Mathew said. “I get to, in many ways, with my faculty and staff and community, shape the future of the school.”

After studying architecture as an undergraduate, Mathew went on to get a master’s in design and a doctorate in computing, where he researched how technology transforms human-centered design. In the early 2000s, he founded one of India’s first design companies at a time when technology began to be integrated into physical spaces, he said. 

“As much as I’m interested in entrepreneurship, I also think there’s an opportunity for intrapreneurship: this idea that innovation can happen within organizations and establish itself,” Mathew said.

As dean, Mathew said he wants to build upon IYA’s founding values in innovation and exploring the intersection of design, business and technology, while also starting a new chapter of its legacy. He said he wants to push students to explore emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and robotics through an innovative mindset as well as do real-world work before they graduate. 

“You have to build an understanding of the context, the people, the systems, the narratives, the technologies that are at play,” Mathew said. “A lot of the things that I do, from a leadership perspective, are built around my experiences as a designer.” 

As a leader and educator, he said his grounding values are collaboration, staying human-centered while innovating and “prototyping the future, not benchmarking the past.”

To him, this means walking into a room and not pretending to know everything, instead being immersed in the community he leads and taking risks rather than just doing what’s worked in the past. He said he wants to make sure students have the opportunity to partake in the work they’re learning about, and he plans to make his rounds in the IYA building to understand what students need and what they’re working on. 

Bodie Currier, a junior majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation at IYA, said he liked that IYA’s last dean, Thanassis Rikakis, was vocal and extroverted, taking the time to build relationships with students by talking to them and sitting in on classes. He said he hopes the new dean will do the same.

“Our deans are inspiring and experienced people. They’re not random academics most of the time, so it’s really fun to have conversations with them,” Currier said. “They often know a lot about the things that we’re working on or things that we’re interested in, so they provide really valuable perspectives.” 

Currier said it’s also important to IYA students that their dean cares about what they have to say. Since IYA is such a specialized school, he said he hopes the new dean is open to flexibility with students choosing the classes they take and expanding the ones offered. 

“IYA students are pretty opinionated about what their education should look like, and we all love our major, but we also all have ideas for how it could be better,” Currier said. “I personally don’t feel like those ideas have been really listened to in the past, and I hope that they will be [with the new dean].” 

Mathew echoed the importance of student input and collaboration in how IYA is run.

“The way you approach problems, the way you download information, the way you interact, the way you communicate … you learn it in the field, in the classroom,” Mathew said. “I hate it when people say students are the customers — you’re not our customers, you’re our primary stakeholder.”

Mathew is a designer, entrepreneur and teacher, and he said if students should know one thing about him, it’s his ability to understand and work across various industries. As dean, he wants to work across schools and help students become more composite thinkers.  

“This whole idea that you are built of one profession [or] one identity comes from the Industrial Revolution, where we wanted workers,” Mathew said. “We don’t need workers anymore. … What we really need are critical thinkers, leaders, people who are able to question the status quo.”