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he says. “What I’m really asking myself is,
‘What does the customer need, and what is
the customer going to need?’”
EMPLOYERS AS CUSTOMERS
Penley says Thunderbird’s chief customer
is the employer who hires MBA graduates —
even though students are the ones paying tuition
and carrying the school’s brand to the
world.
“Students are what we are all about,” he
says. “But these students want good jobs. They
want jobs that are intriguing and creative and
interesting, and jobs that give them a chance
to live outside their home countries.”
If Thunderbird does a good job delivering
the knowledge and skills that employers want,
then students and employers both win. Penley
says this belief led to Thunderbird’s new
one-year MBA, which the school will launch
in fall 2013 (details on page 8).
“From the very first day the faculty team met
to consider a new curriculum, we started by
looking at surveys and focus groups of what
employers had said they need from an MBA,”
Penley says. “We called the employer our chief
customer on that day.”
STEP BY STEP
The one-year MBA will lower opportunity
costs for students, create a more inclusive
campus, and better serve the market. But Penley
cannot say for certain how the new curriculum
will evolve, or where the market will
go next.
In times of uncertainty Penley leans on a
conversation he had with former Greyhound
and Dial CEO John Teets, a friend who died
in 2011 at age 77. Penley asked Teets about vision,
and the veteran leader avoided the topic
for several minutes.
“We had a long conversation about everything
except vision,” Penley says. “After we sat
in his office for a while, he invited me downstairs
to see his sculpture garden.”
Surrounded by the pieces of art — forged
step by step from vision to reality — Teets returned
to the original question.
“People need to know where you are headed
as a leader,” Teets explained. “But visions
do not arrive fully exploded and understandable
to people. Visions are revealed step by
step, act by act, execution by execution.”
Penley looks in the future and sees Thunderbird
as a leader in global management
education. He sees a school that listens to
customers, embraces technology and drives
innovation. As a hiker, he is ready to explore.
“Thunderbird is a global school of business,”
he says. “That’s what we are, that’s what
we have been, and that’s the opportunity we
have in the future.”
Video conversation
Watch excerpts from a recent conversation with
Thunderbird President Larry Edward Penley at
magazine.thunderbird.edu/penley.
Thunderbird President and Chief Academic Offi cer Larry
Edward Penley, Ph.D., poses for his offi cial portrait on
Feb. 15, 2013, at a studio in Phoenix, Arizona.
(KRISTEN JARCHOW)
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