Brian Umbenhauer and Geoff Tuff, principals at Deloitte, are joining forces to become the joint Executives-in-Residence at the W. Frank Barton School of Business at Wichita State University for the fall 2022 semester.
The Executive-in-Residence program was established last year to provide Barton School students, faculty and the Wichita community with vital perspectives and knowledge from industry leaders.
Previous residents include Tom Gentile, president and CEO of Spirit AeroSystems, and Jon Rolph, president and CEO of Thrive Restaurant Group.
“We hope the Barton School is ready for double the insights, excitement and energy,” said Dr. Larisa Genin, dean of the Barton School. “Individually, these men are extremely knowledgeable and dynamic. Teaming them up will make for a truly unforgettable experience.”
Umbenhauer leads Deloitte’s Private and Industrial Products & Construction US Consulting businesses. He is also the visionary and mastermind behind the recently opened Deloitte's Smart Factory @ Wichita on WSU's Innovation Campus. Over the past 25 years, he has leveraged a non-traditional approach to building and delivering differentiated marketplace value propositions for his diverse client portfolio.
Today he leverages investments like the Smart Factory @ Wichita and the enabling ecosystem to help his clients flip internal orthodoxies and reimagine the future of manufacturing, including enabling their workforce.
As a principal of Deloitte Consulting LLP, Tuff holds various leadership positions across its Sustainability, Innovation and Strategy practices. In the past, he led Doblin, the firm’s innovation practice, and was a senior partner at Monitor Group.
Tuff’s work centers on helping clients transform their businesses to grow and compete in nontraditional ways. Over the course of his career, Tuff has worked in virtually every industry and uses his breadth and diversity of experience to bring novel insights about how things might operate to clients stuck in industry conventional wisdom. He is co-author of the national bestseller “Detonate: Why–and How–Corporations need to Blow up Best Practices (and Bring a Beginner’s Mind) to Survive” and “Provoke: How Leaders Shape the Future by Overcoming Fatal Human Flaws.” He holds degrees from Dartmouth College and Harvard Business School.
“We have worked together for a while, but this is going to be a great opportunity to flex our innovation and collaboration muscles,” said Umbenhauer and Tuff in a joint statement. “The world is connected now more than ever, but information can still be siloed. We hope that we can use this platform to make a real impact.”
As the joint Executives-in-Residence, Umbenhauer and Tuff will engage in networking sessions with students, exchange ideas with the Barton School leadership team and host a conversation with business leaders to shape the future of business education in alignment with the future of work.
They will also deliver a keynote speech about “Innovation at the Speed of Your Customers,” which will be open to the public.
For more information on the Barton School, visit wichita.edu/barton.
About Wichita State University
Wichita State University is Kansas' only urban public research university, enrolling more than 16,000 students on its main campus and 9,000 students on its WSU Tech campuses from every state in the U.S. and more than 100 countries. Wichita State and WSU Tech are recognized for being student centered and innovation driven.
Located in the largest city in the state with one of the highest concentrations in the United States of jobs involving science, technology, engineering and math (STEM), Wichita State University provides uniquely distinctive and innovative pathways of applied learning, applied research and career opportunities for all of our students.
The Innovation Campus, which is a physical extension of the Wichita State University main campus, is one of the nation’s largest and fastest-growing research/innovation parks, encompassing over 120 acres and is home to a number of global companies and organizations.
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About the W. Frank Barton School of Business
Located in Kansas’ business hub and with significant ties to the business community, the W. Frank Barton School of Business provides extensive applied learning opportunities. With in-person and online options, Barton School undergraduate and graduate programs are tailored to transform the lives of its students. It also holds a double AACSB accreditation for business and accounting, which puts it in the top 1% of business schools worldwide. The Barton School was established as the university’s College of Business Administration and Industry in 1926 and has thousands of graduates around the world.