Jacob Cohen

Jake Cohen is Senior Associate Dean and Senior Lecturer in Accounting, Ethics, and Law at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is a member of the school’s leadership team, where his focus is on initiating and enhancing MIT Sloan’s strategic global partnerships.

Jake is also a member of the Board of Governors and the Executive Committee of the Asia School of Business (ASB), MIT Sloan’s largest global partner, based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. During the 2022-2023 academic year, Jake served as interim CEO, President, and Dean of ASB. He is currently a Senior Advisor to ASB and holds a Professor of Management Practice position at the school.

At MIT, Jake is an active partner to the Office of External Relations, specifically on philanthropic initiatives and key school relationships. Jake also serves as a member of the MIT Risk Advisory Committee and is MIT Sloan’s Title IX Officer. He is faculty director for the Master of Science in Management Studies (MSMS) degree program. In addition, Jake leads some of MIT Sloan’s largest and most senior Executive Education programs, including the MIT Sloan – Tsinghua PBC School of Finance Scienvest Program.

Since joining MIT in 2011 until 2024, Jake served as Senior Associate Dean for the Undergraduate and Masters Programs and played a critical role in building MIT Sloan’s portfolio of degree programs. Jake also oversaw the Sustainability Initiative and the MIT Leadership Center.

Prior to joining MIT, from 2008 to 2011, Jake was the Dean of the MBA Program at INSEAD, directing strategy and operations for the school’s campuses in France, Singapore, and Abu Dhabi. He also oversaw partnerships with Wharton and launched new collaborations with Kellogg, Johns Hopkins University, and the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

Before taking on the role of Dean, Jake served as the Director of the INSEAD-PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organizations, the school’s largest research center. At INSEAD, he was founder, director, and professor of INSEAD’s Business Foundations Program, as well as Affiliate Professor of Accounting & Control and Business Law. Since joining the school in 2003, Jake focused his research on corporate governance, publishing dozens of INSEAD cases, as well as a textbook on Global Financial Reporting and Analysis.

From 1999 to 2003, Jake was a Senior Teaching Fellow at Harvard Business School in the Accounting & Management Group where he taught in the Analytics program, the MBA program, and in the Executive Education programs. He published extensively Harvard Business School cases on accounting and corporate governance.

Jake also has industry experience in the financial sector, having worked as an accountant at KPMG in Philadelphia, and as a mergers & acquisition consultant for PwC in New York City. Leveraging his extensive business and management experience, he has consulted for a number of organizations including: Accenture, Aetna, ArcelorMittal, Bain, BCG, Blackstone, BMO Capital, and others. From 2021 through 2023, he served as the Audit Committee Chairperson of a NYSE publicly traded company.

Building on his expertise and passion for global perspectives, Jake has served as a visiting professor at the University of Cambridge Judge Business School (UK), University of Oxford Said Business School (UK), University of Oxford Smith School of the Environment (UK), LUISS Business School (Italy), Asia School of Business (Malaysia), INSEAD (France, Singapore, Abu Dhabi), University of Toronto Law School (Canada), University of Toronto Rotman Business School (Canada), and Tsinghua University Schwarzman Scholars College (China) and was recognized for outstanding teaching.

Jake holds a Juris Doctor in corporate law from Syracuse University, a Master of Science in accounting from Whitman School of Management at Syracuse University, and a Bachelor of Science in accounting from Lehigh University. He completed six executive certificates in finance at Harvard Business School, the AVIRA certificate for senior executives at INSEAD, and Leader to Leader (L2L), MIT’s leadership development program.