Why Thunderbird for a Degree?

Global Leadership for the Fourth Industrial Revolution

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Overview

Thunderbird is a world leader in global business and management education for a new era of technological transformation. Guided by a global mindset and a deep commitment to advancing inclusive and sustainable prosperity worldwide, Thunderbird integrates original, multidisciplinary management and business research with emerging technology trends to empower leaders of transnational organizations to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing and increasingly complex world. Blending global business, public policy, and international affairs, Thunderbird specializes in providing hands-on, real-world learning experiences to develop leaders and managers across sectors and disciplines, thereby enhancing performance in public and private organizations globally.

96%

Internship placement rate

85%

Employment rate 4-months post-graduation




The Thunderbird difference

Leadership for the Fourth Industrial Revolution: New technologies such as blockchain, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering are fusing the physical, biological and digital worlds, fundamentally altering the way we live, work and relate to one another. In this new paradigm, organizations need a different kind of leader.

Cross-sectoral approach: Thunderbird operates at the intersection of global business, international affairs, and public policy, providing students with the cross-sectoral skills that position them to shape the dynamic environments impacting their organizations. We develop agile and principled leaders with expertise in collaborating and innovating to serve both business and society.

Transdisciplinary skill-set: Thunderbird empowers global leaders to harness the transformative power of the Fourth Industrial Revolution by leveraging the tremendous resources of Arizona State University to provide relevant training across a wide spectrum of disciplines. Thunderbird’s #1-ranked Master of Global Management program features 16 distinct concentrations spanning the gamut of industries and professions, along with the option for students to create and tailor an academic focus area of their choosing.

Digital Global Mindset: Global leaders and managers must have a collection of skills and knowledge that empowers them to understand and influence individuals, groups, and organizations across cultures, borders, and modes of communication. The global mindset of the 21st century is virtually limitless in its digital nature, and it is through the online, data-driven technologies of the Fourth Industrial Revolution that we connect and create value.

Global and Multinational School: Through our global mindset and worldwide presence, we equip students and professionals to thrive in today’s international business environment. With more than 45,000 distinguished alumni in 145 countries and a rapidly-expanding network of satellite Centers of Excellence in all regions, Thunderbird delivers cutting-edge and fit-for-purpose programs worldwide. From executive education to basic entrepreneurship training, our offerings and global learning experiences provide transformative global skills and stackable degrees and credentials to students and professionals around the world. 

Hands-on Experience: Through a rigorous curriculum and applied learning in real-world environments, Thunderbird provides students with practical, hands-on knowledge that allows them to hit the ground running in challenging environments around the world.

Image of Thunderbird's Global Forum
One Global Place

Our Global Headquarters

We wanted to give every student the resources to change the world so we built the most technologically advanced educational headquarters on the planet. Learn a new language in our immersive VR language lab, create an avatar of yourself in our volumetric capture device, and connect with our global community using the latest in immersive and virtual communications.

Virtual Tour

Our global alumni network

Thunderbird global alumni network spans the globe. With 50,000 alumni in over 170 countries, and 140+ active alumni chapters around the world, our graduates enjoy the community and support of some of the world's brightest leaders anywhere they may be. And Thunderbird makes it easy to connect with other alumni and leverage the global network through T-bird Connect our digital community platform exclusively for T-bird. In addition, our alumni engagement team and chapters around the world host regular event to keep our community engaged.

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Thunderbird Headquarters

Unparalleled Reach

Thunderbird is the world’s only truly global and multinational management school. With more than 45,000 distinguished alumni in 145 countries and a rapidly expanding network of satellite Centers of Excellence in all regions, Thunderbird delivers cutting-edge and fit-for-purpose programs across the globe.

Our network of Centers of Excellence from Los Angeles to Tokyo, and Moscow to Nairobi provides a truly global presence that sets Thunderbird apart by facilitating academic offerings in major commercial centers around the world, connecting and engaging our worldwide alumni network, and partner organizations around the globe.

Explore our worldwide locations

Applied learning opportunities

Thunderbird's Global Challenge Lab (GCL) program is a capstone course at Thunderbird that engages a team of four to five Master of Global Management (MGM) candidates with a client in an advanced or emerging market. The team spends three weeks working on each project onsite with their client and one final week of debriefing on campus. Projects are tailored to the business needs of the client and provide sophisticated data and market analysis, strategy recommendations, and practical, effective plans for sustained growth. The GCL offers projects which are truly win-win propositions, creating value for companies and providing a unique, professional learning experience for our students.

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A thunderbird student stands in a cocoa drying center while on a Global Challenge Lab consulting trip overseas

Frequently asked questions

How has Thunderbird innovated through adversity to offer world-class digital and blended education?

We have invested heavily in advanced digital learning, and the pandemic has accelerated our investments in new modalities. We’ve built on our technical capacities to expand and project multiple blended environments of learning, teaching, innovating, and discovering in new ways. 

We also harnessed the power of remotely controlled telepresence robots in a virtual commencement ceremony, innovating to provide our graduates with an avatar experience of “walking the stage” and receiving their degree as a robot. We can now use the same mobile, live audiovisual interfaces to provide expanded telepresence options to students, one of several new ways to engage remotely.

Employing HD video along with the latest telepresence hardware and software allows Thunderbird to extend our intimate learning environments and world-class faculty around the globe, to make our transformational learning experiences more available and accessible than ever. And as emerging technologies like mixed reality and AI advance, Thunderbird will pioneer them inclusively and sustainably.

What makes Thunderbird’s programs unique and transformative?

Thunderbird specializes in preparing global leaders to guide diverse teams through disruptions and uncertainty by creating solutions that transform complexity from a liability into an asset, transcending boundaries. Roughly half of our students come from outside the US and our cohorts deliver value that parallels the rigorous curriculum, which includes a second language fluency requirement in the case of our Master of Global Management.

The cross-sectoral, transdisciplinary approach to global leadership and management education at the core of Thunderbird’s DNA has increased the value of a T-bird in this turbulent new decade, especially for organizations operating across borders and language barriers. For example, our  Executive Master of Arts in Global Affairs and Management is delivered at ASU’s Barrett & O’Connor Center in Washington, D.C. where mid-career professionals in business, government, and civil society can master leadership for an interconnected world while tapping into all the U.S. capital has to offer.

All T-birds acquire cutting-edge skills for shaping futures by transforming the practices of organizations that span geographies and industries.

ASU University Technology Office Arizona State University.
Thunderbird School of Global Management

401 North 1st Street Phoenix, AZ 85004

Phone: 602-496-7000

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