Suzanne Muchin

Suzanne Muchin is an award-winning Clinical Professor in Kellogg’s Leadership Development Communications (LDEV), where she teaches Selling Yourself and Your Ideas, and Women’s Leadership Seminar. She is a featured lecturer in New Venture and entrepreneurship courses at Kellogg. She and Professor Craig Wortmann also offer the Life Hacks workshop, and Suzanne (Kellogg's most outspoken introvert) also offers her workshop on Selling Yourself: Introverts Edition.

Outside of Kellogg, she co-founded Bonfire, a talent development accelerator for the rising generation of women in the workplace. With her long-time business partner (and Bonfire co-founder), Rachel Bellow, Suzanne is also the host of the popular podcast on work and your life: The Bonfire Podcast.

Before launching Bonfire, Suzanne was a founding partner and lead strategist of Mind + Matter Studio, and a founder of Frequency540, a strategic communications agency that acquired her first brand strategy firm, ROI Ventures (Return on Inspiration). With Rachel, Suzanne launched and developed ROI Ventures’ incubator (Return on Inspiration Labs, LLC) and its media arm (ROI Distributed, LLC). She was inducted into the Chicago Entrepreneur Hall of Fame for these ventures.

A graduate of Tufts University, Suzanne began her career as a Charter Corps member of Teach For America and taught eighth-grade Spanish in the South Bronx. She then spent four years on the National Staff of TFA as the Vice President for Programs, overseeing recruitment, selection, training, and support for all corps members. It was during her time at TFA that Suzanne began focusing on the need for high-quality early childhood programs, particularly in the most vulnerable communities. As a result, she became the CEO of Civitas, a communication agency for the early childhood field founded by Harpo Entertainment's CEO. She spent 11 years in that position, during which Civitas launched large-scale, national communication campaigns that included Begin with Love, Born Learning, What Grown-Ups Understand about Young Children, and other efforts. She also co-authored the book Understanding Children with TED founder Richard Saul Wurman.

Suzanne is an investor in impact companies, a mentor to entrepreneurs at 1871 and TechStars, and an LP and Advisory Board member for MATH Venture Partners. She is a Wexner Heritage Member, and on the Board of Directors of the Chicagoland Entrepreneurial Center (1871), and Uniting Voices (formerly Chicago Children's Choir). She has served as an Independent Director at Knightscope (NASDAQ: KSCP), and is currently an Independent Director of Fooda. In 2022, Suzanne and her husband were awarded the Human Rights Medallion by the American Jewish Congress.

In her free time, Suzanne can be found somewhere on the Chicago lakefront path, as she is a long-time marathon runner, having run nine full marathons and four half marathons over the years. That activity started as a stress-reducing strategy for raising five (now college-age and adult) children and one rescue dog.