Steven M. Aukers

Steve Aukers is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Business and Economics at Ursinus College. He comes to Ursinus with a wide range of business leadership and academic experience and seeks to leverage his industry background as important context in the classroom.

Aukers teaches in the areas of management, strategy, marketing, organizational behavior, leadership and ethics. His areas of experience and academic interest are focused on leadership, strategy, strategic planning, growth (marketing and sales), distressed and underperforming companies, corporate turn arounds and decision making. He regularly consults to industry working with executives and boards in these areas.

Aukers brings to Ursinus over three decades of academic and executive experience, having taught at the university level and led public, private and non-profit organizations. Recently, Aukers served as the North American President & CEO for a U.K. public tech startup, Big Sofa Technologies Inc., where he shaped the firm’s strategic direction, built the North American organization, owned global operational responsibilities, and served on the U.S. and global operating boards. Most recently Steve served as the CEO of a startup called ReFined Plastics focused on converting waste and plastic to virgin plastic.

In addition to his corporate experience at Big Sofa, Aukers also served as the CEO of J. Reckner Associates/Blueberry, a large privately held research consulting firm focused on Fortune 500 clients. In this role, he changed how the industry operated and was structured and successfully navigated through the Great Recession. Aukers won SmartCEO Magazine’s Top 50 CEO award for his impact on the industry. Aukers also served as an executive with the largest marketing intelligence public consulting firms in the world based out of the U.K. and with operations in over 90 countries, TNS Kantar/WPP, where he was on the North American Operating Board and led corporate turnaround efforts as the EVP of strategy after leading a range of areas including serving as the CEO for a joint venture with ESPN with clients such as the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, Formula 1, Premier League, Olympics, and NASCAR. In his role as SVP at TNS Kantar, he led as the head of business development, head of global accounts, head of M&A, and head of strategic planning.

Aukers started his global corporate experience at the largest company in the world at the time, DHL Group – Deutsche Post AG with $100 billion in revenue, 620k employees and operations in 220 countries. Aukers led a number of functions including business intelligence, customer strategy, data analytics, and roles in marketing including integrated campaign targeting and analysis and was a member of a select team leading the U.S. turnaround. Aukers also has non-profit leadership experience, having served as CEO of HealthShare, Inc., a healthcare non-profit serving older adults in need. Aukers has extensive experience in leading business turnarounds for underperforming organizations - he has been through four turnarounds and led three of these events including as an external lead consultant to the board of NASDAQ listed Harris Interactive, Inc. These experiences included working intimately with Bain & Co., McKinsey & Co., Alix Partners, and KPMG.

In the academic sphere, Aukers was a professor at Texas A & M University, where he served on the faculty in a teaching and industry consulting role through a joint Texas A & M University and Texas A & M Agricultural Extension Service appointment where he reported through to Governor Bush’s office to provide industry consulting for the State of Texas. More recently, he was a professor at DeSales University teaching undergraduate and graduate MBA students in the Division of Business where he won the University’s Most Outstanding Professor of the Year award and Excellence Award Division of Business MBA. While at DeSales, he served as a member of the University Planning Committee that developed the University’s five-year strategic plan, member of the Middle States Commission accreditation team, and member of the Division of Business Strategic Planning Committee. He was also an Assistant Coach for the DeSales Men’s Lacrosse team. Previously, Aukers was on staff at Indiana University - Bloomington where he served as the second in command for an innovative consulting, research and educational institute under the direction of the former Director of the National Park Service, U.S. Department of Interior.

Aukers earned his B.A., M.S. and Ph.D. from Indiana University – Bloomington, with doctoral work focused on decision making theory and marketing with additional work in social psychology.