Tyra Banks is going from hosting “America’s Next Top Model” to teaching at one of America’s top universities, according to the higher education website Poets & Quants.
The supermodel and reality television host will be co-teaching next spring with professor Allison Kluger at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. The elective for MBA students is “Project You: Building & Extending Your Personal Brand,” and will teach how to effectively advertise on both social and traditional media.
Banks, 42, completed a nine-week Owner/President Management program at Harvard Business School four years ago. In May, she appeared on Stanford’s campus to be part of a leadership series where Kluger was in the audience, according to a spokesperson for the school. A conversation between Kluger and Banks at the business school event ultimately led to the co-teaching partnership.
The Stanford Business course will be exclusively limited to 25 MBA students. There’s no exam, rather attendance and a presentation consist of the final grade. The presentation has “students sharing their honed personal brand to the public via three viable platforms (Facebook Live, local television, YouTube) to jump-start their personal brand extension,” according to the course description.
Kluger is an expert in broadcast media management and has produced at ABC’s “Good Morning America” and “The View,” MSNBC, and started the now-defunct Current TV with former Vice President Al Gore and entrepreneur Joel Hyatt.
Banks has created two successful shows: 22 seasons of “America’s Next Top Model” and 810 episodes of “The Tyra Banks Show.”
Banks won’t be the only Hollywood celebrity teaching on a college campus this year. Actress Angelina Jolie will be a visiting professor this fall teaching a master’s program run by the Centre for Women, Peace and Security at the London School of Economics. The course consists of strategies to combat sexual violence during global conflicts.