William Cordeiro has plans for change in the College of Business Administration. (Special to Sacramento State)

William Cordeiro has been a founder and, if everything works out as he hopes at Sacramento State, he could be a transformer.

He was one of 13 faculty who started California State University, Channel Islands, in 2001. It’s the newest of the CSU’s 23 campuses and the one with a novel backstory: It was once the site of Camarillo State Mental Hospital.

Cordeiro served for many years as dean and professor of Management in the Martin V. Smith School of Business and Economics, following a career in the private sector. When he relinquished his Channel Islands parking pass in early July, someone wished him a happy retirement.

“Oh, I’m not retiring,” he said.

Instead of relaxing on his family’s farm near Arroyo Grande, Cordeiro came home to Northern California – he grew up in San Rafael – to take over as dean of Sac State’s College of Business Administration. His first day on campus was July 23.

“Starting Channel Islands was the job of a lifetime,” he says, “but after 17 years, any change would be incremental, so this was an opportunity to change the scale in a bigger arena. Sacramento State is an attractive place in terms of its accomplishments and potential.”

Cordeiro is the college’s third dean in just over four years. His two predecessors remain on the faculty.

“Our new motto is ‘be the best’: the best teachers, the best researchers, the best fundraisers, the best advisors, the best colleagues, the best students. Five years from now, I would like for us to be recognized as the best business school in the CSU,” he says.

“I don’t think we need massive new programs. We have a bachelor’s degree with eight sub-disciplines, a good MBA in four flavors, and a Master in Accountancy. We need to maintain excellent levels of scholarship, teaching, and assessment.”

Cordeiro says he plans to ask the faculty for ideas on reorganizing and improving the college.

“Bill has served in leadership roles for nearly two decades, and his strong leadership and effective management style will help move the College of Business Administration forward,” says Provost Ching-Hua Wang.

*****

Cordeiro had a fairly idyllic childhood in San Rafael, much of it spent riding his bike around town with his buddies.

He was the only child of Simon and Lucille Cordeiro. His mother was a school teacher who studied at UC Berkeley. His father had a third-grade education and ran a grocery store in nearby San Anselmo, where young William stocked shelves. The grocery store lost business and closed after a supermarket opened across the street.

“Poor dad. He was kind of broken by that and sold insurance for a while,” Cordeiro says.

He attended Catholic schools in San Rafael and earned his undergraduate degree in biology from the University of San Francisco. He put his plans of becoming a doctor on hold when he got married. Andrew Cordeiro, his son from that marriage, is a fifth-grade teacher in Lodi.

Cordeiro went on to get a master’s in business administration (MBA) from the University of Southern California, and a master’s in management and a doctorate in executive management from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate School.

“My claim to fame is that I studied with Peter Drucker,” says Cordeiro, who can quote Drucker all day long. “He’s a famous guy who is credited with inventing the discipline of management. He stressed what he called ‘intellectual integrity,’ and he recognized that dedicated employees are the keys to success.”

A facsimile of Business Week magazine with Drucker on the cover hangs on a wall in Cordeiro’s Tahoe Hall office.

In the late 1960s and into the early ’80s, Cordeiro worked in private industry. He was a senior analyst for ARCO Products Co., the division of Atlantic Richfield that maintained and operated domestic refining assets. After 10 years, he moved on to ARCO Transportation Company, managing planning and strategic studies for the division that built the Trans-Alaska Pipeline.

And his last job before going into academia was serving as the president of Veta Grande Companies, Inc., which owned silver mines in Nevada and a gold mine in Oregon.

Cordeiro met his wife, Marie, in 2009. They married in 2014. She’s a registered nurse and founder and longtime director of the Annenberg School of Nursing at the Jewish Home for the Aging, in Los Angeles. They like to travel and to dance. They’re looking forward to exploring Sacramento’s farm-to-fork scene.

“We have a very good life,” Cordeiro says. “We like to be with people, to go places, and have good meals and good wine.” – Dixie Reid