The first dean of the school (1925–1931), Willard Eugene Hotchkiss was born in 1874 in Amber, New York. He came to Stanford from Northwestern University where he had already organized a school of business administration. After earning his PhD in economics at Cornell in 1905, Hotchkiss subsequently taught at Northwestern (1905–1917, 1921–1925), the University of Minnesota (1917–1919), and later the Carnegie Institute of Technology (1930–1944.) His business career included work as Executive Director of the National Industrial Federation of Clothing Manufacturers and President of the Armour Institute of Technology. In the public sphere he served as Panel Chairman of the War Labor Board (1943–1945) and Chairman of the Enforcement Division of the National Wage Stabilization Board, and was also an arbitrator and mediator, working largely in the steel and textile industries. He died in Monterey, California in 1956 as the result of an automobile accident.