Tyra Banks: supermodel, reality-show host and now . . . university professor.

Stanford University recently announced that the 42-year-old “America’s Next Top Model” star will be teaching a two-week MBA course on personal branding.

But before you roll your eyes and dismiss Banks as another James Franco, consider that few people are more qualified than the modelpreneur to give a series of lectures on branding. Banks is an adult who can actually teach millennials a thing or two about self-promotion: She more or less invented it.

Modeling is a profession with a long shelf life. Some, like Kate Moss, have managed to keep modeling in perpetuity, and many greats have ended up flaming out (Edie Sedgwick), languishing in obscurity (Audrey Munson) or quietly retiring. But the savviest have parlayed their experience into other jobs, whether acting (Lauren Bacall, Cara Delevingne), photography (Lee Miller, Bunny Yeager) or some other aspect of fashion (Grace Coddington, who orchestrated Vogue’s most luscious photo shoots; Wilhelmina Cooper, who started her own modeling agency).

Banks, however, built a business, and — unlike Wilhelmina or peer Cindy Crawford, who has an empire of makeup and furniture — she’s made her business the business of being Tyra Banks. (Which is every millennial’s dream, right?)

For a while it looked like Banks might have a more normal post-modeling career: She had several acting gigs (including a stint on “The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air”) and even a pop song. But then in 2003 she debuted “America’s Next Top Model,” one of the first reality-show-competition programs.

Banks was not only the face, host and mentor of the show — she was its creator. And she cannily made the show not so much about the naifs competing for a shot at the modeling world, but about Tyra Banks: her catchphrases (“smize!”); her sometimes glamorous, sometimes tough tales of navigating the fashion world of the 1980s and ’90s; her over-the-top demands and criticisms and self-absorption. Banks whirls into every scene looking like the most fabulous person in the room, completely upstaging her poor protégés. (Tyra hosted the show for 23 “cycles.”)

Turns out being Banks has been good business. Since “Top Model,” the enterprising egoist has hosted a talk show, in which she went undercover variously as an obese person (wearing a fat suit), a man and a stripper named Chanel, to understand how those who were not Tyra Banks lived. She wrote a YA novel called “Modelland,” based on her observations on the fashion industry, which Publishers Weekly described as “a nonstop barrage of surrealism and wackiness”.

Unlike other too-cool supers like Moss or Naomi Campbell (with whom Banks had a much-publicized feud), Banks has embraced Twitter and Instagram and every form of social media that could be used as a promotional tool. She has always been transparent about her desire for fame and recognition, but what makes her lovable is that she doesn’t hide it.

Banks’ way of doing things is now the norm. A gal can’t coast on a pretty face any longer if she wants to land a Versace campaign — she has to have an Instagram following (and maybe her own makeup line or merch). Indeed, look at Vogue’s September cover star Kendall Jenner and her squad, including Gigi and Bella Hadid and Jourdan Dunn. These ladies, dubbed the “Insta-girls” by the glossy, largely shaped their own identities and brands. And they’ve done so without the help of a photographer mentor like Peter Lindbergh (credited for launching the careers of Naomi, Linda, Cindy and that generation of models) or Steven Meisel (who discovered later stars like Natalia Vodianova). They’ve done it with their cellphones, their selfies, and their hunger and hard work.

Whether Tyra Banks has helped create that world, or just anticipated it before anyone else, surely we can all learn how to navigate it from her.