A native of Nashville, Tennessee, and an Appalachian boy at heart, Philip Powell is a seventh-generation Tennessean who accidentally stumbled into a career in academia, and is so glad he did. While attending the University of South Carolina, he was an exchange student in Economics & Political Science in the Fiji Islands at the University of the South Pacific. After leaving the South Pacific, he went to Vanderbilt University where he wrote a dissertation about economic development and environmental policy in the Pacific Island economies.
Clinical Associate Professor Phil Powell
He married his wife, Sydney, in 1995. The following year, he was thrilled when Indiana University hired him. He started off working at Kelley’s School of Business’ Indianapolis campus teaching MBA students. During his first few years at IU, he also developed a new research interest in healthcare.
After becoming a Clinical Professor of Business Economics, he focused the majority of his time on teaching and administration. He became Faculty Director of the Health Care Academy for the full-time MBA program in Bloomington, leveraging the research he started in healthcare. In 2006, he became faculty chair of the part-time MBA program in Indianapolis. In 2009, he returned to Bloomington and became the faculty chair of the full-time MBA program.
“We took the program up in the rankings,” says Powell. “In fact, we were able to achieve a number one ranking in student satisfaction, teaching quality, and career outcomes in 2012.”
For four years, Powell ran Kelley Direct, the online MBA program. During that time, they increased their annual intake of students by 50%. The program was ranked number one in the country.
In 2016, Powell returned to Indianapolis to become Associate Dean of Academic Programs where he managed all the academic programs on the Indy campus. He was in charge of revenue creation, enrollment, marketing, development, and career services. He returned to Bloomington in 2022 and is now the Executive Director of the Indiana Business Research Center.
Professor Powell Teaching
Through the years, he’s had a host of fond memories as it relates to his career, but one of his favorites was when the MBA program launched the International Consulting Program. They took students to other countries such as Botswana, Burma, Peru, Guatemala, Fiji, and Greece so that they could consult with small businesses in emerging markets to help them thrive.
Powell recalls the first time they took five teams of MBA students to an extremely poor area of Lima, Peru, where they met with the owner of a jewelry manufacturer who made jewelry by hand from his house. At their first meeting, the owner told the students that he had saved $15K US dollars.
“I’m going to do exactly what you tell me to do with the money,” he said.
Powell watched the eyes of the students grow wide as it hit them that this man trusted them with his life savings. Failure was not an option because if they gave him bad advice, it would ruin his family financially.
“I watched the students generate good solutions for this jewelry manufacturer,” says Powell. “To me, that captures the type of transformation we want our students to achieve. That kind of learning was a living example of what the Kelley School is all about, and I’ve been able to see that moment repeat itself over and over again.”
Powell and his wife, Sydney, have two grown children, Savannah and Sawyer. A huge college sports fan, Powell roots for the Hoosiers and the South Carolina Gamecocks. Although he may play a round of golf every now and then, his biggest passion is working at Kelley.
“I love it so much it’s hard to distinguish between work, play, and purpose,” he says
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