Lena Booth

Lena Booth is currently the Deputy Dean of Thunderbird Academic Enterprise and Associate Professor of Finance. She teaches global financial decisions, corporate finance, global financial management, and global private equity. Born in Malaysia and educated in Singapore and the U.S., she speaks and writes English, Chinese, and Malay, and speaks a few Chinese dialects.

As Deputy Dean, Lena works with Thunderbird/ASU’s passionate faculty to design and operationalize innovative, differentiated, and cutting-edge Thunderbird curriculum. She also helps optimize faculty resources by working with faculty on course offerings, ensuring smooth and high-quality program delivery in the full-time, executive and online programs. Lena also works with academic institutions around the world on designing accelerated pathway programs to Thunderbird/ASU. She also helps launched Thunderbird degree programs in international locations.

Lena’s teaching and research interests have taken her all over the world. She has presented research and taught executives in many cities in the United States, Canada, Latin America, Asia, and Europe. Lena's excellence and dedication in teaching have earned her numerous teaching awards. She was voted by Thunderbird graduate students as “Outstanding Faculty Member” 14 times in the past 8 years.

In addition to teaching in the graduate and undergraduate degree programs at Thunderbird, Lena also taught in executive education programs for multinational companies such as Exxon Mobil, LG Electronics (Korea), SK Corp. (Korea), Xenel (Saudi Arabia), Alfa Grupo (Mexico), Prestolite (Mexico), Amway, Cotemar (Mexico), SABIC (Saudi Arabia), and Bank Mandiri (Indonesia). She also taught in the Advanced Management Program for oil and gas executives, and in the Project Artemis program, a unique business-skills training program aimed to build entrepreneurial skills of promising businesswomen from Afghanistan.

Lena's primary research focus is on capital raising through initial public offerings and through commercial banks. Her research has appeared in several distinguished peer-reviewed journals. She has also authored and published numerous case studies, some of which earned the best-selling case studies award.