About me
Will Phillips
Associate Professor of Management, Valparaiso University
The path
Nearly two decades of work outside academia, then a PhD as a first-generation college student.
Tempest Digital Solutions 1997
I founded a new-media and marketing consultancy serving small-business clients in real estate, software security, and related fields. This site carries its name forward.
Phillips Performance Horses 2003
I built a horse-training operation that managed more than $1 million in livestock, handling everything from breeding and training to sales and marketing.
International Association of Equine Dentistry 2009
As executive director, I led a trade association of 300 members in 30 countries, and helped broker the cooperation between practitioners, veterinarians, and legislators that produced Texas law governing the field.
Back to school
A first-generation college student, I earned a BBA in entrepreneurship at Texas State University, then an MBA in international business and a PhD in organization and management studies at the University of Texas at San Antonio.
Valparaiso University 2026
Today I teach management and leadership at Valparaiso, bringing years of experience in curriculum design, accreditation, and academic leadership.
Teaching
Forty-plus sections, every format
Undergraduate, graduate, executive education, and online courses in management, organizational behavior, leadership, strategy, and entrepreneurship, taught face-to-face, online, hybrid, and HyFlex.
Why agents
Practice, at scale
My first agents were personality bots built around the Dark Tetrad. From there I built AI agents into a graduate strategy course before ChatGPT went mainstream: a case spokesperson, a cultural-competencies coach, and a personalized exam generator. Tempest Digital Solutions is where that work continues, with instructors kept in charge of what gets taught and how it gets judged.
Let's talk
Always happy to talk teaching, research, or building agents for your course or organization.