46: Linda Ginzel
Source: Chicago Booth
About Linda
Linda Ginzel teaches Managerial Psychology at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
Linda was born in Seoul, South Korea but as a military brat, she was a citizen of the world, growing up in Germany before moving to the US.
A hard worker since childhood, Linda got her first job at Montgomery Ward – for the younger members of our audience, that was an OG department store back in the day – followed by stints as a hair salon receptionist, apartment complex manager, life insurance saleswoman, corporate training consultant, and others.
By all accounts, Linda and her husband Boaz lived a charmed life. And then tragedy struck. In 1998, their son Danny was strangled by a portable crib that had previously been recalled. That the tragedy was avoidable added insult to injury, and, ever the activist, Linda, along with Boaz, founded Kids in Danger, a non profit dedicated to preventing other families from suffering the same fate through education, industry training, and advocacy for improvements in children’s product safety. Through their work, Linda and Boaz helped push the state of IL in banning the sale of recalled children’s products and were instrumental in the enactment of the state’s Children's Product Safety Act in 1999.
Meanwhile, Linda continued her rise through the ranks of academia, teaching at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business and Northwestern’s Kellogg Graduate School of Business, and in 1992, she took on her dream job as a senior lecturer in behavioral science at Booth, where, among her other accomplishments, she established the Corporate Executive Education Program, which now ranks number one in the world for Executive Education programs.
Linda does not shy away from novel approaches to teaching, once climbing up onto a desk during a lecture, and continuing to lecture while walking around the room on top of all the desks, just to illustrate the concept of norms.
As if all of this was not enough, Linda also wrote a book, Choosing Leadership, which spent time on multiple bestseller lists and was featured in Forbes’ "Top Life and Career Design Books to Plan Your Year,” and is now incorporated into curriculums at Indiana University Maurer School of Law.
Linda has earned dozens of awards, including the Faculty Excellence Award, Phoenix Award, was voted by her students as an impact professor, and recognized as a woman of influence multiple years in a row. Her most prestigious award is the President’s Service Award, given by President Clinton for her work on Kids in Danger. But, as Linda will tell you, her proudest academic achievement is the Academic Excellence Award, given by students enrolled in the evening and weekend MBA programs at Booth.