Former Dean of USC, Marshall School of Business

As an award-winning and successful entrepreneur, Jim Ellis’s legacy is where dynamic business and innovative education meet.

Jim is a well-rounded leader in higher education who kept one foot in the business world throughout his academic career. At the University of Southern California, he served as dean of the Marshall School of Business, among other administrative roles. Jim also served as a tenured professor in the marketing department where he was named Professor of the Year and rated one of the top five professors at the university by its very own students.

Outside of academia, Jim held leadership roles in retail, marketing and sales, apparel manufacturing, home construction and banking. He successfully sold a number of businesses he owned or operated and was the president of American Porsche Design where he was responsible for opening the company’s first retail store in the world.

Jim holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Business Administration from the University of New Mexico. He has served as a chairman on a number of non-profit and community boards, and the award he is most proud of came from a local charity and named him Father of the Year.

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