Thunderbird: Where Global Meets High Tech
What makes Thunderbird the world’s most global and digital school?
As Thunderbird School of Global Management observes its seventy-fi h anniversary, we celebrate not only our origins in pioneering global business, management, and leadership education in the wake of World War II but also our evolution into the world’s first truly global and multinational academic institution. Thunderbird has a global community of alumni serving in leadership roles and satellite Centers of Excellence in twelve countries, soon expanding to twenty-five hubs worldwide. Our newly constructed, state-of-the-art global headquarters opens this year, equipped with the latest digital technologies, including cutting-edge tools for telepresence connectivity and data visualization on a planetary scale.
By pioneering learning technology and expanding our global presence, Thunderbird is showing once again what it means to be at the vanguard of international business, management, and leadership education.
What makes Thunderbird’s global alumni network unique?
With more than 45,000 distinguished alumni in 145 countries, Thunderbird’s tight-knit community of bilingual and multilingual graduates resembles a giant, compassionate family that spans the globe. Known as T-birds, they’re uniquely equipped with a global mindset and high technical aptitude to make a di erence in this era of rapid change and disruption. T-birds everywhere o er their talents to empower our students and realize our collective vision of inclusive, sustainable prosperity worldwide. By reciprocally engaging and supporting our alumni, we advance solutions to global challenges, connect current students to transnational and state enterprises, and form mutually beneficial partnerships across sectors. Thunderbird future-proofs alumni skills through lifelong learning opportunities and connects alumni in a worldwide network of experts who are all trained to work across boundaries of every kind.
Why is Thunderbird investing in a global network of Centers of Excellence?
Our regional Centers of Excellence deliver innovative and fit-for-purpose graduate degree programs and professional certificate programs where they can make massive impacts. These satellite hubs link students and alumni from Los Angeles to Tokyo and Moscow to Nairobi, providing a truly global presence that sets Thunderbird apart with academic o erings in major commercial centers, physically connecting and engaging our alumni, and supporting international recruiting.
How will Thunderbird Global Headquarters connect students to the latest technology and the world?
The nexus of our Centers of Excellence is our state-ofthe-art facility in Phoenix, Arizona, within the capital city’s business district. This high-tech home connects students to the world using cutting-edge collaboration and education tools built into the architecture.
Thunderbird HQ leverages the latest mixed reality (AR/ VR) and data visualization technology to immerse students in executive and managerial leadership in real-time. Our global decision theater empowers students to manipulate data using AI and VR. Our VR language lab helps students learn a required second language. The global forum hosts world-class speakers with hybrid presentation capability for events such as graduation ceremonies, broadcasting live to and from our satellite hubs using a 360-degree video ring that circles the forum space.