Dr. Sandra J. Peart became the fourth dean of the Jepson School of Leadership Studies in 2007. A national leader in her field, Dr. Peart is a former president of the History of Economics Society and co-director of the annual Summer Institute for the History of Economic Thought.

A distinguished scholar with special expertise in the history of economic thought and political economy, especially in the context of ethical leadership, she has focused her research in this area on the following broad questions: How do individuals, who are motivated by private interests, come together to make decisions about the group? How well do people make such decisions? Are we all equally able to decide?

She has applied her insights to leadership, where she argues that one means by which to prevent ethical failures of leadership is to suppose that we are all equally capable of leading (or learning to lead). She then asks what this would mean institutionally and has argued in favor of trials of randomized leadership as an institutional framework that might yield “good” – ethical and effective – leadership. In collaboration with experimental economists at George Mason University, she has begun to investigate this question experimentally using a public goods game.

Dr. Peart has authored or edited seven books, many with David M. Levy, a professor of economics at George Mason University, including The Street Porter and the Philosopher: Conversations on Egalitarian Economics and The "Vanity of the Philosopher": From Equality to Hierarchy in Post-Classical Economics. She is the author of more than 50 refereed journal articles on ethics and economics, rationality, utilitarianism, race and eugenics, the transition to "modern" economics, and leadership in public goods experiments. Her research has been supported by the NEH and the SSHRCC.

In 2005-06, she was a fellow of the American Council on Education. In 2009, she joined the Board of Directors for LEAD VIRGINIA. Before coming to the Jepson School, Dr. Peart taught at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, Ohio, where she led the development of a leadership studies program, and at the College of William and Mary.