Tom Hunsaker

Tom Hunsaker is associate dean of innovation for the world’s top-ranked global management school, Thunderbird School of Global Management (a unit of Arizona State University), where he has taught in the areas of competitive and global strategy, performance leadership, and organizational consulting.

Hunsaker is also academic director of Thunderbird Applied Learning which delivers engagements that involve either extensive simulations or team-based, client-facing, project-driven consulting experiences. Client-facing project-based engagements require the dynamic application of interdisciplinary material to real-world, real-time organizational challenges. Through the program’s capstone experiences (TEMLab and Global Consulting Laboratory) student-driven strategic consulting engagements have aided Fortune 500’s, Small & Medium Enterprises, Social Enterprises, Non-Profits, Governments, and Foundations in over 30 countries on five continents.

Hunsaker has authored prominent work in innovation management, behavioral strategy, leadership, and higher education. He is co-author of the Bridger™ model, originally published in Harvard Business Review, which outlines how people best serve as conduits for innovative ideas in organizations. Among his other noted work is Mindset Positioning™, which highlights why similarly talented people get dramatically different results from the same activities – and what organizations are to do about it.

Hunsaker’s work has appeared in many practitioner and scholarly outlets including Harvard Business Review, Business & Economy, Financial Times, Research in Higher Education, Learning in Higher Education, BizEd and on Businessweek, Bloomberg, and Business & Economy online, among others.

Hunsaker enjoys extensive global experience. He has consulted for companies (ranging in size from Fortune 500 to start-up) operating in North America, Latin America, Europe, and Asia. He has a particular expertise in Latin America (Spanish fluent) where he has been a visiting professor at the top-ranked graduate business school in Ecuador (USFQ). As a trainer and speaker he has addressed audiences on four continents in diverse sectors, including: consumer goods, energy, financial, healthcare, manufacturing, and telecom. He lives with his wife and children in Arizona where they enjoy the outdoors as much as possible.