Former model, television personality, and inventor of smizing Tyra Banks is going to be donning a new hat next spring as college professor when Stanford (no joke) will be hiring her to co-teach a class at the business school called "Project You: Building & Extending Your Personal Brand." She'll be teaching the two-credit course alongside lecturer Allison Kluger, who, as Poets & Quants reports, first had the idea to team up with Banks after seeing her appear at a "fireside chat" during Stanford's Women in Business leadership series this past May.
Kluger has apparently been teaching courses at the B-school in reputation management and strategic communications, and she thought Banks would be a perfect fit to help students who are hoping to become the next Martha Stewarts and Donald Trumps of the brand universe. Because who better to inspire and motivate students than this woman?
In 2012, Banks completed a nine-week certificate program at Harvard Business School as part of its Owner/President Management program, and she went on to brag that she got a "diploma" and really liked saying "when I was at Harvard" for a while, even though she is not actually a business school graduate and did not get a degree.
Lately Banks has been using her own personal brand to promote a line of cosmetics called TYRA Beauty.
According to the course description, the Stanford class will "help each student realize: What is a personal brand and how can it be unleashed as a valuable, competitive advantage? Why do you need a personal brand? How do you differentiate yourself and create a brand identity and strategy? How do you use social and traditional media to enhance your brand effectively as well as measure the metrics of social media responses? And how do you know when to pivot and evolve your brand for sustainability?"
And, naturally, it will involve, "image transformations, live broadcasting of presentations at a television station, live streaming of portions of the class on Facebook Live, and YouTube recordings."
But will student's be graded on how well the photograph while standing nearly naked in cold weather and whether or not they can smile with their eyes? Because otherwise they're obviously not trying hard enough.
And just remember, she only yells because she loves you.