Cynthia A. Thompson

Cynthia Thompson, PhD, is Professor of Management and former Academic Director of the Executive MBA program. She has taught courses in Managing People and Organizations, Leadership Development, Work-life Integration, and Human Resource Management to students at all levels, including undergraduate, MBA, EMBA, and doctoral students, and has taught Organization Change & Development to Master’s degree students in Singapore. She recently developed an MBA course called, Leading Organizational Change for Environmental Sustainability. In 2018, the course won an Honorable Mention from the Page Prize for Excellence in Sustainable Business Education. She feels passionately about the need to integrate the issues surrounding climate change and environmental sustainability throughout the MBA curriculum, and she has helped faculty incorporate sustainability as a key theme in the Executive MBA curriculum.

Professor Thompson is recognized for her research on organizational work-life culture, and in particular, the extent to which various aspects of organizational culture affect employee well-being, satisfaction, and commitment. Her work has been published in over 25 journal articles and book chapters, and two of her articles were nominated for the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research. She has been interviewed in the popular press, including magazines such as Working Mother and Ladies Home Journal, newspapers such as the Daily News, AM New York, and Crain’s New York, and has been interviewed by NPR and NBC-NY about work-life issues.

In addition to her academic responsibilities, Prof. Thompson is president of WorkVision, LLC, a management consulting firm specializing in leadership development. Prior to that, she was a senior consultant at LearnTech Associates in New York City, a management consulting firm. She has also worked for the Tennessee Valley Authority, Union Carbide, and AT&T.

Academic Degrees

BS, Florida State University, Psychology, 1977

PhD, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Industrial-Organizational, Psychology, 1985