Stewart Thornhill, Ph.D.

Stewart Thornhill, Executive Director of the Zell Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, serves as the Eugene Applebaum Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies and the Managing Director of the Zell Founders Fund. Prior to Ross, Dr. Thornhill served as the executive director of the Pierre L. Morrissette Institute for Entrepreneurship and a member of the faculty, focused on strategy and entrepreneurship at Ivey Business School at Western University in London, Ontario. At Ivey, he championed a number of new initiatives and has sizable experience helping entrepreneurs through his involvement in QuantumShift, an Executive Development program for high-growth entrepreneurs. Thornhill's extensive background also includes global experience, having held the Karel Steur chair in entrepreneurship at the Universidad de San Andreas, Buenos Aires and various professorial roles at Jacobs University in Bremen, Germany, the Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Paris in France and the Schulich School of Business at York University in Toronto. Dr. Thornhill's research interests include strategic execution, leadership, competitive strategy, innovation and corporate entrepreneurship. His work has appeared in several top management journals and he has published more than 20 teaching cases. He serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Business Venturing, the Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, the International Entrepreneurship and Management Journal, and the Journal of Global Entrepreneurship Research. He received his Ph.D. from the University of British Columbia and also holds a B.Sc. (Eng.) in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA with a concentration in Finance. Prior to pursuing a career in academia, he worked as a manufacturing engineering and a radio journalist.