Sara Miller McCune, the dynamic founder and executive chairman of SAGE Publishing and a longtime UC Santa Barbara benefactor, received the 21st Venky Narayanamurti Entrepreneurial Leadership Award April 18 in a ceremony at the Santa Barbara Hilton Beachfront Resort.

Chancellor Henry T. Yang, College of Engineering Dean Rod Alferness, UCSB Trustees, previous Venky Award winners, faculty and donors, friends and family were on hand for the occasion. Venky Narayanamurti is a former dean of the College of Engineering (CoE) who embraced entrepreneurship and fueled the entrepreneurial and startup activity that is now such an prominent component in the CoE.

”Sara and SAGE Publications have had a long and deep history with UC Santa Barbara and a transformative impact on our campus across all disciplines,” Yang began. “She is a luminary among business and philanthropic leaders and has a deep commitment to education and innovation for the benefit of our society. She is an honorary alumna of UCSB and a recipient of our highest honor, the Santa Barbara Medal.” 

The chancellor then described the form taken by some of the many SAGE contributions, naming the SAGE Sara M. McCune Dean of Social Sciences, SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind, Miller McCune Executive Director of Arts & Lectures, SAGE Publications Education and Outreach Fund, George T. McCune Dissertation Fellowships in Communication, McCune Conference Room and endowments in the Interdisciplinary Humanities Centers, Sara M. McCune Library in Mosher Hall, Sara Miller McCune Endowed Internship and Public Service Program in the Capp Center for the Study of Ethics, Religion.

“The list is sooo long,” Yang said with a smile. “These two words, “entrepreneurial leadership,” don’t seem enough to describe all that you have done, so I will just say thank you and congratulations.” 

“Your pioneering, visionary entrepreneurial spirit is at the very foundation of what we do here in the greater Santa Barbara area,” added Dean Alferness, “You are indeed an extremely fitting recipient of this award, as evidenced by the fact that your colleagues, former winners of the award, are the ones who have selected you.”

McCune founded SAGE in 1965 as a 24-year-old to enable scholars to disseminate quality research in their own voices and break new ground in emerging fields of study.

McCune currently serves as director of SAGE Publications Ltd., founded in London in 1971, and of Corwin, a SAGE company and leading publisher for educational administrators and teachers. SAGE established subsidiaries in India (1981), Singapore (2006), and Melbourne (2016) and also has offices in Beijing, Shanghai, Cairo, Toronto, and Washington, D.C. The Venky Award recipient founded the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy in 2007, which launched the award-winning magazine Pacific Standard. McCune is a longtime philanthropist and has taken particular interest in promoting social, educational, economic, and environmental justice. 

Throughout her decades-long journey steering the company, McCune has continued to grow and guide the company in new directions to reflect changing times and technologies. 

“I’m most proud that the entrepreneurial mindset that initiated the founding of SAGE continues to be a driving force for us today,” McCune said in her remarks, mentioning new ventures including SAGE Ocean, which supports new research techniques and big data in social science. “SAGE changed its name to SAGE Publishing as a nod to digital publishing and, since 1990, we have been publishing journals in the areas of medicine and engineering, so we have a toe in the field of engineering these days.”

Finally, she said, “I’m awfully proud of the fact that UCSB is known far and wide for its strength in interdisciplinary work.”

Rather like Sara Miller McCune herself.