Allison Thornley was hired as the Senior Associate Athletic Director for Internal Operations at Illinois State in February of 2024.
In her role at Illinois State, Thornley oversees the department's business office, which includes personnel/facilities and game operations units and all athletic department budget areas. She will also coordinate with the University's legal, purchasing, facilities planning, budget and comptroller's offices as a liaison for the Athletics Department.
Thornley comes to Illinois State after spending the past 13 years working in the University of Illinois Springfield athletics department. Since 2020, Thornley has served as the Associate Athletics Director for Strategic Planning and Finance and was also the Athletics Department Senior Woman Administrator at UIS.
In addition to her finance and planning background, Thornley spent a lot of her time at UIS performing various functions associated with student-athlete welfare and discipline. She served as an institutional representative to the NCAA and GLVC, as well as a member of the UIS Intercollegiate Athletic Advisory Committee. She also oversaw gender equity planning and compliance with Title IX, while advising and acting as a resource for female coaches, staff, and athletes. UIS has had a lot of recent postseason success, so she also directed host operations for NCAA baseball, women's golf, men's soccer, and softball regionals. Thornley also served as a liaison with key constituents across campus and in the community as needed.
Thornley came to the Prairie Star Athletic Department from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was the Resource and Policy Analyst for the Department of Animal Sciences. In that capacity she managed human resource processes, visa processing, purchasing and the graduate student program. She helped develop fiscal reports and budgets for the Research Farms as well as training secretarial and management staff with business operating systems.
A native of Arrowsmith, Ill., Thornley earned her bachelor’s degree from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2004 majoring in Agribusiness, Farm and Financial Management. She will be joined in Normal by her husband, Seth, and children Anniston, Moxon, and Pippon.
