Suzanne Muchin is a Clinical Associate Professor in the Kellogg Architectures of Collaboration Initiative (KACI), where she teaches Selling Yourself and Your Ideas. She is a featured lecturer in new venture and entrepreneurship courses at Kellogg, and a lecturer and mentor for the Zell Fellows Program, a selective venture accelerator program designed to help student entrepreneurs successfully launch new businesses.

Outside of Kellogg, she is the co-founder of Bonfire, a talent development accelerator for the rising generation of women in the workplace. With her long-time business partner (and Bonfire co-founder), Rachel Bellow, Suzanne is also the host of the popular podcast on work and your life: The Big Payoff, and the on-stage host of TEDX Chicago.

Before launching Bonfire, Suzanne was a founding partner and lead strategist of Mind + Matter Studio, and a founder of Frequency540, a strategic communications agency that acquired her first brand strategy firm, ROI Ventures (Return on Inspiration). With Rachel, Suzanne launched and developed ROI Ventures’ incubator (Return on Inspiration Labs, LLC) and its media arm (ROI Distributed, LLC).  She was inducted into the Chicago Entrepreneur Hall of Fame in 2012 for these ventures.

A graduate of Tufts University, Suzanne began her career as a Charter Corps member of Teach For America, and taught eighth grade Spanish in the South Bronx. She then spent four years on the National Staff of TFA as the Vice President for Programs, overseeing recruitment, selection, training and support for all corps members. It was during her time at TFA that Suzanne began focusing on the need for high quality early childhood programs, particularly in the most vulnerable communities. As a result, she became the CEO of Civitas, a non-profit communication agency for the early childhood field which was founded by the CEO of Harpo Entertainment. She spent 11 years in that position, during which Civitas launched large-scale, national communication campaigns that included Begin with Love, Born Learning, What Grown-Ups Understand about Young Children and other efforts. She also co-authored the book Understanding Children with TED founder Richard Saul Wurman.

Suzanne is an investor in impact companies, a mentor to entrepreneurs at 1871 and TechStars, and an LP and Advisory Board member for MATH Venture Partners.  She is a Wexner Heritage Member, and on the Board of Directors of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (1871).

In her free time, Suzanne can be found somewhere on the Chicago lakefront path, as she is a long-time marathon runner, having run nine full marathons and four half marathons over the years. That activity started as a stress reducing strategy for raising five (now teenage and adult) children and one rescue dog.

• BA, 1990, International Relations, Tufts University, cum laude

• Principal, Mind + Matter Studio, 2012-present
• Founder and Lead Strategist, ROI* (Return on Inspiration) Ventures, 2006-2012
• CEO, Civitas, 1996-2005
• National Program Director, Teach For America, 1993-1996
• Midwest Recruiter, Teach For America, 1992-1993
• Charter Corps Member/Teacher, Teach For America, 1990-1992

Leadership Development Models & Practices (KACIX-930-0)
This is a foundational course in the leadership field that deals with a core competency and responsibility for managers: developing leaders. In short, it concentrates on how we (as leaders in organizations) can develop team members to realize their potential. Growing others' talents helps managers to accomplish the mission and improve their organizations. The course employs a variety of pedagogy techniques (e.g., lectures, discussion groups, guest speakers) and requires students to submit a final paper detailing how course material relates to a leader development activity that is germane to their life. The course integrates theories and frameworks associated with constructs related to organizations, leadership, and adult development in order to provide you a more complete understanding of how leaders are nurtured. By the end of the course, you will be able to more cogently analyze and address team members' developmental needs and situations.

Selling Yourself and Your Ideas (KACIX-477-0)

Field Study (KIEI-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.

Field Study (KACI-498-0)
Field Studies include those opportunities outside of the regular curriculum in which a student is working with an outside company or non-profit organization to address a real-world business challenge for course credit under the oversight of a faculty member.

Selling Yourself and Your Ideas (KACI-477-0)
It's been said that humans are "meaning making machines." More than 70,000 years ago, near the outset of the Cognitive Revolution, we created language to help protect and organize ourselves.1 Over the ensuing millennia, we have developed myriad ways to communicate with each other. Present day, our communications take many forms, and so we find ourselves in conversations, meetings, presentations, and even as producers on social media. As business leaders, we move through these many forms of communications in the course of a week, and indeed we can even traverse each of them within one day. In order to be dynamic, high-performing communicators, we must do three things: 1. Be cognizant of what high performance looks like in each of these distinct modes of communication; 2. Develop a situational awareness for how to succeed in each form; and 3. Become agile in calibrating our approach. Selling Yourself & Your Ideas is a course that will force you out of your comfort zone to help you show up, stand out, and break through. You will develop the knowledge, skills, and disciplines you need to be a powerful and influential communicator, no matter the situation in which you find yourself.