Dr. Theresa M. Welbourne is the Will and Maggie Brooke Professor in Entrepreneurship and Executive Director, Alabama Entrepreneurship Institute, Culverhouse College of Business at The University of Alabama. Dr. Welbourne’s expertise is in the areas of entrepreneurship, human capital management and strategic leadership in high growth, entrepreneurial and high change organizations. She is the founder, president, and CEO of eePulse, Inc., a human capital technology and consulting firm.
Dr. Welbourne’s research and work have been featured in popular publications such as Inc. Magazine, Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Business Week, New York Times, and Entrepreneur Magazine, and she is well published in numerous academic journals and books as well as business books. Dr. Welbourne also runs two large-scale research studies, one focused on high-growth companies and initial public offerings (IPOs), and another that is focused on employee resource groups (ERGs) and how they drive innovation and firm-level growth. As part of this work, she also studies employee energy and how it can be managed to improve wellness, productivity, growth, and innovation.
Theresa was awarded the 2012 Academy of Management Distinguished Executive Award (for contributions in research, teaching and practice), in 2017 she was named a Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP) Fellow, and in 2022 she made the Business Alabama list of the top 22 Women in Tech. Dr. Welbourne also holds an appointment as an affiliated senior research scientist with the Center for Effective Organizations, Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. Theresa does consulting with organizations that are interested in optimizing human capital to drive innovation and growth. She uses a data-driven approach to help leaders learn how to respond rapidly to changing circumstances, avoiding dips in productivity and performance. She worked in the technology industry in Colorado for ten years before receiving her PhD at the University of Colorado, and she held faculty appointments at Cornell University, the University of Michigan, University of Nebraska, and the University of Southern California before moving to Alabama.
@theresawelbourn