Ellen Dutton

An authority in new product development, entrepreneurship and innovation, Ellen is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Curriculum, Capstone Advisor, and Manager of Startup Programming for the ESTEEM Graduate Program. She will assist the ESTEEM Program by equipping teams to launch new businesses, become innovators within large corporations, and be leaders of dynamic, innovative teams. She thrived with a career at Whirlpool Corporation for the last 30 years where she utilized consumer driven innovation for products and services management.

Her most recent roles were leading commercial excellence and the development of new product architectures in EveryDrop® water filtration, Laundry Products across five brands, and launched the industry’s first suite of global cordless appliances using a proven innovation framework. She led multiple diverse high performing work teams globally. She also managed an inside sales group of 48 individuals while creating a new organization structured around helping independent retailers market their businesses while creating simple to complex marketing strategies and sales training. In another role, her team created a B2B portal for conducting business with Whirlpool. She also was a National Sales Account Manager and won salesperson of the year twice.

Ellen is a highly effective and strategic innovation leader with a passion for driving results. She has been recognized for strong, transformational leadership and delivering consistent operating results in challenging environments. She has a proven ability to elevate end-to-end category management, build new strategic road maps for growth, inspire around a common vision and drive operational rigor to deliver results. She has extensive experience in product/portfolio development, marketing operations, technical engineering requirements translation, strategic planning, multi-channel marketing and cross-functional team development. She spends a considerable amount of time volunteering in the community and serves on multiple 501(c) (3) boards, served in multiple leadership capacities, and mentored Robotics teams. She created a High School Innovation Challenge where 250 students from 5 schools participated in a semester-long pitch off competition and created a brand new High School Internship program at Whirlpool Corporation.

Ellen holds a BA in Business Administration/Management and a minor in Spanish from Truman State University. She also holds an MBA from Indiana University-South Bend.