'A way of being': Business school professor excels in sports, teaching and innovation

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Ivonne Chirino-Klevans is a Kenan-Flagler Business School clinical associate professor of organizational behavior — but that’s just one of her many titles. 

Outside of Kenan-Flagler, Chirino-Klevans is an author, a NASCAR consultant, a volunteer and an international athlete, having competed for Mexico and the United States. 

“She has done so much in her career,” Michael Christian, a Kenan-Flagler professor of organizational behavior, wrote in a statement to The Daily Tar Heel. 

She turns her experiences in the workplace as a consultant, an executive coach and international athlete into accessible and applicable perspectives that students can learn from, Christian wrote. 

Chirino-Klevans was seven when she began gymnastics alongside her sisters, as their parents wanted them to partake in healthy exercise. She instantly took a liking to the sport and found herself growing in skill. 

“I started winning competitions, then eventually, I got invited to the national team,” Chirino-Klevans said. “And to me, gymnastics was a way of life.” 

When she was a part of the Mexico national team, Chirino-Klevans enjoyed meeting people from places around the world. 

“I started learning a lot of lessons about how to work with people from different cultures,” she said. 

Along with her athletic accolades, Chirino-Klevans earned her doctorate in psychology, followed by a Masters of Business Administration. She was unsure what exactly she wanted to pursue with her degree, bouncing from social anthropology to law school before finally landing on psychology.  

“I like learning about people, understanding, helping, predicting, [and] empowering people,” Chirino Klevans said. “So that is what draws me to organizational behavior.”

At Kenan-Flagler, Chirino-Klevans primarily teaches courses focused on leadership, management, diversity, equity and inclusion. She also works as a resilience coach for the Carolina Collaborative for Resilience and a volunteer with LÍDER, a leadership development program for Latino undergraduate students. 

In 2022, the Mexican Consulate awarded her for her work using artificial intelligence and virtual reality developing simulations for conflict management across different cultures. 

Allison Schlobohm, a clinical associate professor of management and corporate communication at Kenan-Flagler, first met Chirino-Klevans when the former was leading a course for the online MBA program at UNC and was looking for a new member of the teaching team.

“After interviewing her and looking through her course evaluations from other online courses she taught, it was a no-brainer that we would want to work with her because she just has such a positive impact on all the students that she encounters,” Schlobohm said. 

Schlobohm said Chirino-Klevans was an incredibly committed teacher, always looking to innovate new forms of teaching by keeping track of new trends and what students need to know to guarantee success. 

She also said that Chirino-Klevans holds herself to high standards, and it makes others want to hold themselves to the same standard.

“I feel that as a colleague and as a friend, but I can also tell that shows up for students,” she said. 

Chirino-Klevans is always contributing positively to the culture and to the energy at the school, something Schlobohm said she really appreciates. 

“Business is a competitive field, and I think all our students can agree that the business school can feel like a competitive place sometimes,” Schlobohm said. “But with Ivonne, what you're really getting is someone who wants you to succeed on the same team as her.”

Even while pursuing numerous professional endeavors, Chirino-Klevans never sacrificed on personal balance, Christian wrote. 

Recently, Chirino-Klevans received two medals at the 2024 Pan-American Masters Games for competitive racewalking, which she took up after she had to give up running because of overuse and strain on her ankles.  

“It's been the discipline that I learned since I was little,” Chirino-Klevans said, when asked about how she balanced all her activities. “So to me, it's a way of being.” 

When asked about her goals for the next few years, Chirino-Klevans said she wanted to be happy and healthy and continue innovating within the classroom for students. 

“We owe it to them, so I want to create that,” Chirino-Klevans said. 

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