Dr. Thurman, a multiple teaching and service award recipient, has extensive advisory and management experience helping a variety of global firms realize value from innovative business, operations, and technology strategies. He has held senior positions at Booz Allen Hamilton and American Express, and has served public and private sector clients on six continents.
Paul’s consulting work focuses on facilitation and analytical modeling to support strategic planning and decision-making, cost management, and improved customer experiences. He has also developed solutions around customer segmentation, demand forecasting, and performance improvement. He currently runs his own management and education consultancy and is a frequent conference presenter.
Professor Thurman currently teaches strategic management and data analysis courses at Columbia’s Mailman School of Public Health. He has also taught courses in decision, risk, and operations in the full-time and Executive MBA Programs at the Columbia, London, and University of California, Berkeley business schools, and at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs. Paul was also a Healthcare Research Fellow, Professor, and MBA Program Director at the Moscow School of Management SKOLKOVO in Russia, and he has held visiting professorships in China, India, Brazil, Greece, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Australia, and Iceland.
In addition to his faculty appointments, Paul serves as a clinical professor and affiliated researcher at the National Cancer Institute’s Center for Cancer Research at the National Institutes of Health. His recent peer-reviewed research has focused on scientific collaboration and its effect on research quality, and also on cancer drug patents, FDA approvals, and market pricing. He is the author of MBA Fundamentals Statistics, (Kaplan, 2008; CreateSpace 2016), Pocket Guide to Data Analysis (Kaplan, 2009), and co-author (with Thomas P. Ference) of MBA Fundamentals Strategy (Kaplan, 2009; CreateSpace 2016).
Dr. Thurman is also lead editor and chapter author, with colleagues from around the world, of Female Immigrant Entrepreneurs, Father-Daughter Succession in Family Businesses, Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, and Leadership and Change Management: A Cross-Cultural Perspective, four research compendia published by Gower/Taylor and Rutledge (UK) from 2010-2016. In 2013, Paul completed a text for the SAS Institute, Propensity Scoring and Adjustment for Causal Inference, and presently, in addition to leading USAID-, CDC-, and HRSA-funded efforts to reform public health education in Mozambique, Sierra Leone, and Democratic Republic of Congo, Paul is working with the World Bank to develop a text and workshop on data analysis and decision-making in fragile states focused on the country of Sudan. He recently published his 10th book, a text on strategic planning and decision-making, for the SAS Institute.
Finally, Paul has served on the boards of the Greenburgh (New York) Nature Center, the Scarsdale (New York) Teen Center, and currently sits on the advisory boards of a number of entrepreneurial ventures in healthcare, media and entertainment, and information technology security. Paul received his BS in mathematics from Stanford University and his MBA (valedictorian) from Columbia. He also completed doctoral work in health policy and management at the State University of New York and received his Doctor of Business Administration (DBA) degree from the Ecole des Ponts Business School in Paris, France.
