Dr. Brenda Flannery is dean and professor of management at the College of Business at Minnesota State University, Mankato. She has been at Minnesota State Mankato since 1996 serving in numerous roles and leadership positions including assistant vice president for undergraduate studies and international education, associate professor of management and assistant professor of management. She has been a member of and led dozens of department, college, university and system-wide teams to improve student success and experiences. Dean since 2011, she led the College of Business through successful strategic planning, AACSB accreditation, new and redesigned curriculum, communication and fundraising benchmarks, expanded alumni, corporate and community relations, facility and technology improvements, increased student scholarships and real-world experiences and faculty hiring, development and research.

Students voted Dr. Flannery as the College of Business Faculty of the Year six times from 1997-2003 as sponsored by the Epsilon Iota Chapter of the professional business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi. She is passionate about experience-based education and has designed, initiated and implemented award-winning courses and programs with colleagues in entrepreneurship, leadership, experiential and interdisciplinary learning, service learning and international education.  

She was a 2014 Minneapolis St. Paul Business Journal Women in Business award recipient, 2012-2013 Minnesota State Student Association Administrator of the Year, 2008-2009 Minnesota State Mankato Outstanding Service Award recipient, and 2009 Campus Technology magazine Top 11 Innovator recipient for leading the development of the university’s Curriculum Design System that has become the way for thousands of curriculum management activities and processes to occur each year. 

Dr. Flannery’s research on environmental management and service learning has been published in top academic journals, including the Academy of Management Journal, Leadership Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics and Journal of Management Education. Her Bachelor of Science in Marketing and MBA degrees were earned at Western Illinois University and her PhD in Business Administration is from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.

She has taught semesters abroad at the Tec de Monterrey in Mexico and the University of Lethbridge in Canada and has been a member of delegation visits to Germany, Netherlands, France and Malaysia. She has served on many boards of directors across southern Minnesota including the South Central Minnesota Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Regional Center for Entrepreneurial Facilitation (RCEF), Children’s Museum of Southern Minnesota, Mayo Clinic Mankato Community Board, Mankato YWCA and GreenSeam.