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Thunderbird School of Global Management (or simply Thunderbird) - Formerly, American Institute For Foreign Trade - is a business school of Arizona State University, a public research university in the Phoenix metropolitan area. It was founded in 1946 as an independent, private institution and acquired by Arizona State University in 2014. The school derives its name from Thunderbird Field No. 1, a decommissioned World War II-era US Army Air Forces base which served as its campus for more than 70 years. (The name alludes to the thunderbird of Native American mythology, as well as the phoenix for which the city is named.) The school moved to ASU's Downtown Phoenix campus in 2018, and then to a new, US$75 million building in 2021.
Thunderbird is a unit of the Arizona State University Enterprise. Its programs are accredited by the Higher Learning Commission and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB).
As of 2018, the school had around 45,000 alumni,[6] also referred to as "Thunderbirds" (or "T-Birds").