Dr. Susan E. Perkins

Strategy Coach

Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Illinois – Chicago (UIC)

Susan E. Perkins is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management at the University of Illinois – Chicago (UIC) where she teaches Business Strategy and Global Strategy courses across the MBA programs. She was voted the “Best MBA Professor” in 2018-19 and received the Dean’s Commendation for Excellence in MBA Teaching in 2016-18. Prior to joining UIC, Professor Perkins was on faculty at Northwestern University, Kellogg School of Management for a decade in the Management and Organizations department and taught in the core International Business and Markets Program; previously taught International Business Management at the Stern School of Business, New York University; and was a two time visiting professor at MIT - Sloan School of Management in the Global Economics and Management (2015-2017) and Organizational Studies (2011–13) departments. Professor Perkins also teaches internationally in the top-ranked MBA Strategy Specialization Program at HEC-Paris in France.

Professor Perkins is passionate about serving the communities in which she researches, teaches and lives. She has taught over 2,500 inner city entrepreneurs across 20 U.S. markets including Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Oakland, Boston, Washington, D.C., among others. In 2019, she was most recently recognized for her entrepreneurship executive education teaching by the Initiative for A Competitive Inner City (ICIC) as a Hall of Fame Professor.

Her research focuses on the leadership roles in organizations and how the leadership’s strategic decisions shape their organizations and societal-level outcomes. Her research has been published in journals including the Harvard Business Review, Administrative Science Quarterly , and the Global Strategy Journal . She is a Faculty Research Fellow at the interdisciplinary UIC Institute for Research on Race and Public Policy (2020-21) and also a contributing writer at the Huffington Post on issues related to strategic leadership, corporate governance, and economic development.

Susan is a member of the Strategic Management Society, the Academy of Management, the Academy of International Business, a PhD Project faculty member and mentor, and a NBMBA Association former Naylor Fitzhugh PhD Fellow and lifetime member.