Vlerick Dean Marion Debruyne: “Every single business school needs to learn. Why can’t we learn together?” Courtesy photos
For Marion Debruyne, there have been few quiet moments in a decade of disruption.
When she became dean of Vlerick Business School ten years ago, digital learning was still an emerging theme. Since then, Debruyne has led the Brussels, Belgium school through a pandemic, the acceleration of online and hybrid formats, geopolitical volatility in Europe, and now the AI revolution reshaping business and management education.
“There is never a dull moment in the dean’s office,” she says, speaking with Poets&Quants recently from her office on the B-school’s campus in Brussels. “The pace of change in our industry is accelerating.”
AI LITERACY, AI OPPORTUNITY
But at a time when some deans sound defensive about the future of business education, Debruyne sounds energized. The conversation inevitably turns to artificial intelligence. It is, she acknowledges, what “everybody is talking about.” But at Vlerick, the response is not hand-wringing. It is experimentation.
Debruyne believes business schools have a clear responsibility: make students AI literate. That means more than teaching them how to prompt a large language model.
“It means being proficient users of AI in a responsible way,” she says. “It also means not taking at face value what you get out of it. Being able to judge, being able to use it as an enhancement of your thinking – not replacing your thinking.”
Academic integrity is part of that equation. So is strategic imagination.
In Vlerick’s full-time MBA, the school has introduced an AI track that blends mandatory and elective learning experiences. Recently, the cohort participated in an overnight AI hackathon, building new AI-based ventures in a matter of hours. “Students thought that was pretty cool,” Debruyne says.
The goal is not just tool mastery, but opportunity recognition. “What new possibilities does AI unlock? What business can you create?” she asks. She likens AI to electricity: the infrastructure itself is transformative, but the real disruption lies in the applications built on top of it.
At the same time, Vlerick is pushing AI into executive education. The school launched a program titled Take the Lead in AI – and Debruyne enrolled as a participant. “Eating our own dog food,” she says. “I learned a ton. Anybody, from any age, needs to get on with it.”
ULTRA HUMAN, ULTRA DIGITAL
“The dean’s role,” says Marion Debruyne, “is not just custodial. It’s stability and continuous motion”
If AI is one pillar of Debruyne’s strategy, humanity is the other.
Without claiming a crystal ball, she sees the future of management education as a dual movement: “ultra human” and “ultra digital.” The digital dimension is obvious. The human one may be even more important.
Critical thinking. Judgment under ambiguity. The ability to lead in paradox.
“Leaders today face an enormously complex landscape,” she says. “It’s not even about trying to solve the paradoxes. You just have to accept them and lead in the paradox.”
In that context, business schools become something more than content providers. They are refuges – structured spaces for reflection in a volatile world. That belief aligns with Debruyne’s own intellectual roots.
An engineer by training who moved into marketing and strategy, she built her academic career around disruptive innovation and new business models. During her PhD, she spent time at Wharton School, later joining the faculty at Emory University. Returning to Belgium to join her alma mater was not an obvious choice.
“I told the dean at the time, I only want to focus on research and teaching,” she recalls. Administration did not interest her. “Famous last words.”
The deanship was never a long-planned ambition. It emerged. That nonlinear path later inspired her book, Making Your Way, which challenges the myth of linear career success. Behind every “picture perfect moment,” she argues, lies complexity unseen from the outside.
BRUSSELS AS A STRATEGIC HUB
If AI is reshaping curriculum, geopolitics is reshaping student flows.
Debruyne says interest in Europe has grown, including anecdotal signs of more North American applicants. Brussels offers a distinctive value proposition. It is one of the most international cities in Europe, home to EU institutions and a dense network of multinational organizations. Vlerick’s campus hosts students from more than 60 nationalities.
Geography helps. Amsterdam, Paris, and London are all within 90 minutes by train. MBA students have added a European strategy tour to traditional global study trips, visiting Germany and the Netherlands to explore regional ecosystems. “Students really see value in that,” she says.
Partnerships amplify that European experience. Master’s students can combine time at Vlerick with other European schools, broadening their exposure beyond a single country.
For Debruyne, collaboration is not a side project. It is a strategy.
Vlerick, in Brussels, Belgium, is part of the Future of Management Education network, a consortium of schools focused on learning innovation
ALLIANCES OVER EMPIRES
In an era of geopolitical uncertainty, she questions whether large-scale international expansion is always the most resilient model. “There are very few schools that have the scale and the resources to say, ‘We can do this all by ourselves,’” she says.
Instead, Vlerick has doubled down on alliances. It is part of the Future of Management Education network, a consortium of schools including ESMT Berlin and IE Business School, among others, focused on learning innovation. Together, they experiment with tools such as virtual reality and share best practices.
“Every single business school needs to learn,” Debruyne says. “Why can’t we learn together?”
That collaborative muscle is reinforced by Vlerick’s strong executive education portfolio, which she believes creates a market-driven instinct inside the organization. Faculty, she says, are not resistant to change. They are eager for it. She saw that during the shift to online learning. She sees it again with AI.
Agility, however, is not purely internal. Accreditation and regulatory processes can slow the launch of new programs. The tension between speed and oversight is real. But Debruyne argues schools must push for flexibility wherever possible.
Recent launches reflect that urgency. The school introduced a Master’s in Business Analytics and AI, designed to bridge the gap between technical specialists and business leaders. It is also launching a new Executive MBA in partnership with IIM Ghaziabad, with modules in Delhi, Dubai, and Brussels.
At the same time, Vlerick has restructured its own Executive MBA architecture, allowing students to personalize their learning through tracks in strategy, entrepreneurship, or digital transformation.
The underlying theme is stackability, micro-credentialing, and lifelong learning – blurring the traditional lines between degree programs and executive education.
“The dean’s role,” Debruyne says, “is not just custodial. It’s stability and continuous motion.”
OPTIMISM AS A MORAL DUTY
Asked to look ahead to 2026 and beyond, Debruyne resists apocalyptic narratives about AI and higher education.
She acknowledges risks. But she refuses doom.
“I’m an optimist by nature,” she says. “And I think optimism is a moral duty.”
DON’T MISS SUSTAINABLE, PROFITABLE BUSINESS. IT’S THE EUROPEAN WAY …
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