| Lillian Mills | |
| Titles: | Dean of McCombs School of Business |
| Alma Mater: | University of Florida |
Lillian F. Mills is an American accountant and the first female dean of the University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business.[1] [2]
Mills completed bachelor's and master's degrees in accounting at the University of Florida in 1980 and 1981, respectively,[3] before moving to the University of Michigan to earn a doctorate in the subject, where she was advised by Joel Slemrod and published the dissertation Essays in Corporate Tax Compliance and Financial Reporting in 1996. She was a research fellow at the United States Department of the Treasury and worked as a certified public accountant for two firms from 1981 to 1989 before joining the University of Arizona faculty in 1997. She taught at UArizona until 2005, and accepted a teaching position at the University of Texas at Austin the following academic year.[4]
At UTAustin, Mills held the Beverly H. and William P. O'Hara Chair in Business as well as the Lois and Richard Folger Dean's Leadership Chair.[5] She became interim dean of the McCombs School of Business in April 2020, upon Jay Hartzell's elevation to interim president of the University of Texas at Austin.[6] In June 2021, Mills was appointed to the deanship permanently,[7] and is the first woman to serve in that position.[8] Mill's lasting impact on the accouting profession will be "the influence she has had on generations of tax scholars."[9]