Wendy Angst

Wendy Angst is a Teaching Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Studies for the minor in Impact Consulting in the Mendoza College of Business at the University of Notre Dame. She has been teaching at Notre Dame since 2010. She has taught undergraduate, graduate, and executive courses specializing in design thinking, innovation, consulting, strategy, and entrepreneurship. She is spearheading the new “Powerful Means Initiative”, focused on providing multi-semester project engagement, from idea to implementation, for students to make a meaningful impact on the world’s most pressing problems. She specializes in experiential learning, and is currently working with a girls school in Uganda, as highlighted in a “What would you fight for?” piece that aired in November 2022. Through this work she has facilitated classroom projects to ensure the students (Innovation Scholars) at the school have the skills and support they need to thrive; to support the school achieving self-sufficiency; and to improve the economic prosperity of the region. Wendy also teaches Innovation & Design Thinking as a Visiting Professor at the University of Cattolica in Milan.
Wendy is a recipient of the Joe & Gina Prochaska Family Teaching Award (2019), voted on by the Mendoza class for outstanding achievement in preparing students to be leaders in the field of business, the Rev. Edmund P. Joyce, C.S.C., Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching (2018), and the James Dincolo Outstanding Undergraduate Professor (2017). Additionally Wendy was named to Poets & Quants’ Favorite Professors of Business Majors in 2020 and 2019.
Outside of the classroom Wendy serves as a Faculty Fellow with the Notre Dame Pulte Institute for Global Development (NDIGD), a Kaneb Center Faculty Teaching Fellow, a faculty advisor for the Inspired Leadership Initiative, and serves as the faculty advisory for the Notre Dame chapter of Design for America and the Innovation for Impact Club.
Prior to joining Notre Dame, Wendy was an entrepreneur in the healthcare space, serving for over a decade as one of the earliest champions and architects of the electronic personal health record. She shepherded the company from angel funding to acquisition before leaving industry for academia. She has also spent time consulting with companies both nationally and internationally.
Aside from her work at Notre Dame, Wendy has advised a variety of startup companies and has served on the board of directors of multiple firms. She has 3 children and enjoys running, biking and traveling. Her research interests include how design thinking is being adopted, utilized, and applied within organizations, and how to facilitate student learning experiences that have a meaningful impact.