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.