FACULTY PARTNERS
Rawi E. Abdelal
HERBERT F. JOHNSON PROFESSOR OF INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT
EMMA BLOOMBERG CO-CHAIR, BLOOMBERG HARVARD CITY LEADERSHIP INITIATIVE
Rawi Abdelal is the Herbert F. Johnson Professor of International Management at Harvard Business School and the Emma Bloomberg Co-Chair of the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative.
Professor Abdelal's primary expertise is international political economy, and his research focuses on the politics of globalization and the political economy of Eurasia. Abdelal's first book, National Purpose in the World Economy, won the 2002 Shulman Prize as the outstanding book on the international relations of eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. His second book, Capital Rules, explains the evolution of the social norms and legal rules of the international financial system. Abdelal has also edited or co-edited three books: The Rules of Globalization, a collection of Harvard Business School cases on international business; Measuring Identity; and Constructing the International Economy.
Rawi is currently at work on two projects. One project, The Fragile State of the World, explores the inter-related challenges that undermined the first era of globalization, circa 1870-1914, and which threaten to destroy the current age of global capitalism. The second project, The Profits of Power, explores the geopolitics of energy in Europe and Eurasia.
Ethan S. Bernstein
Edward W. Conrad Associate Professor of Business Administration
Ethan Bernstein (@ethanbernstein) is an associate professor in the Organizational Behavior unit at the Harvard Business School. In an era when the nature of work is changing, Professor Bernstein studies the impact of workplace transparency—the observability of employee activities, routines, behaviors, output, and/or performance—on productivity, with implications for leadership, collaboration, organization design, and new forms of organizing.
Professor Bernstein’s research has been published in journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Annals, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, Harvard Business Review, Research on Organizational Change and Development, and People + Strategy, and it has appeared in The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, NPR, Inc., Forbes, Fast Company, Businessweek, Esquire, Nikkei Business, Nikkei Shimbun, Le Monde, Maeil Business (Korea), and TEDx Boston, among others. He is a 2014 HBR McKinsey Award Finalist, and his research has won awards including the inaugural J. Richard Hackman Dissertation Award, the Academy of Management’s 2013 Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior award, the Academy of Management’s 2013 Best Publication in Organization and Management Theory award, the Academy of Management's 2014 Outstanding Practitioner-Oriented Publication in Organizational Behavior award, the Academy of Management's 2014 Best Paper Based on a Dissertation Award, the INGRoup 2014 Best Paper award, the 2013 Fredric M. Jablin Doctoral Dissertation Award from the International Leadership Association, the HBS Wyss Award, and the Susan G. Cohen Doctoral Research Award.
Prior to joining the faculty, Professor Bernstein spent a half-decade at The Boston Consulting Group in Toronto and Tokyo. Tapped by Elizabeth Warren to join the implementation team at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, he spent nearly two years in executive positions, including Chief Strategy Officer and Deputy Assistant Director of Mortgage Markets, at the newest United States federal agency.
Professor Bernstein earned his doctorate in management at Harvard, where he also received a JD/MBA degree. While a doctoral student, he was a Kauffman Foundation Fellow in Law, Innovation, and Growth, and he remains a member of the New York and Massachusetts Bar Associations. He holds an AB in Economics from Amherst College, which included study at Doshisha University in Kyoto.
Professor Bernstein is a self-declared culinary adventurer and avid cyclist, runner, skier, reader, and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me listener. Originally from Los Angeles, he lives in Newton with his wife, Maly (HBS MBA 2006), and two young sons.
Jeffrey J. Bussgang
Senior Lecturer of Business Administration
General Partner, Flybridge Capital Partners
Jeffrey J. Bussgang is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at the Harvard Business School (HBS) as well as Co-Founder and General Partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, an early-stage venture capital firm with offices in Boston and New York City and over $1 billion under management across six seed funds and nine network funds. “Unicorn” portfolio companies include BitSight, Bowery, Chief, FalconX, Habi, MadeiraMadeira, and MongoDB. He studies lean startups as well as strategy and management challenges for founders.
At HBS, Jeff teaches MBA classes on entrepreneurship and lean start-ups called Launching Technology Ventures, Venture Capital Journey, and Scaling Minority Businesses. He has authored two books: one for startup joiners, Entering StartUpLand, and one on venture capital and entrepreneurship, Mastering the VC Game, to provide entrepreneurs an insider’s guide to financing and company-building. Both books have been hailed by the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, TechCrunch and The Financial Times as essential guides for entrepreneurs.
Jeff is an active community member, serving as board chair and co-founder of Hack.Diversity, a talent development program for Black and LatinX technologists, as well as a board member at educational non-profit Facing History and Ourselves and co-founder and board chair of LEADS, an economic and leadership development program for diverse Gateway City leaders.
Jeff holds a BA in Computer Science from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Kat Everett
Instructor
Katrina “Kat” Hobbs Everett, M.Ed. is a constructive deconstructionist, anti-racist, educator, entrepreneur, curator, activist, writer, spoken word artist, and business owner. She is a Senior level Executive with over 23 years of refined experience in the human/social services field working in a variety of professional settings and levels including grassroots organizations, city, state, and federal entities, public k-12 schools, public and private higher education institutions. She has 11 years of diversity, equity, inclusion, justice and belonging (DEIJB) education experience, and extensive community engagement expertise working with cross-sector teams locally, nationally and globally.
Kat is Co-Founder of Power of Self-Education (POSE) Inc. a community engagement & advocacy nonprofit whose mission is, "To inspire people and mobilize resources to strengthen communities". She is also the founder and curator of COCO Brown, a cultural community healing center, studio & co-working space that uses the mediums of art, music, storytelling, and movement to strengthen community relationships and incubate social and economic equity. During the pandemic Kat founded and launched a state-certified black-owned /woman-owned business enterprise, that provides large and small-scale consulting, coaching and facilitation services to individuals, groups and businesses to assist with transformative culture shifting in an effort to foster places of belonging. Kat is also an Adjunct Professor for the Social Justice program at Merrimack College. Her personal mission is to “Constantly Cultivate Community”.
Frances X. Frei
UPS Foundation Professor of Service Management
Frances Frei is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders create the conditions for organizations and individuals to thrive by designing for excellence in strategy, operations and culture. She regularly advises senior executives embarking on large-scale change initiatives and organizational transformation, including embracing diversity and inclusion as a lever for significantly improving performance.
A global thought leader on leadership and strategy, Frances is widely recognized for her dynamic teaching style and breakthrough courses optimized for rapid, lasting impact. She developed one of the most popular classes at HBS, which explores business models that reliably delight customers. She also led the design and launch of HBS’s innovative FIELD curriculum built around learning experiences that are experiential and immersive.
While at HBS, Frances has held extensive leadership roles including Senior Associate Dean for faculty development and recruiting, for executive education, and faculty chair for the MBA required curriculum. Within each of these roles, Frances led significant change efforts. Highlights including addressing the gender gap in satisfaction and performance for students and faculty and broadening the reach of executive education to incorporate the evolving needs of executives and their organizations. This includes enhancing our off-campus program as well as using our state-of-the art HBX studio on campus.
In 2017, Frances was tapped to be Uber's first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy with a mandate to help the company navigate its very public crisis in leadership and culture. In her ongoing work with Uber, she has focused on giving thousands of employees the tools to excel in a context of hyper-growth, strategic change, and an evolution in cultural values.
Her firsthand experience in Silicon Valley gave her a new lens on the urgent topic of trust, and in May 2018, Frances delivered a widely-viewed TED talk on ‘How to build (and rebuild) trust.’ This powerful framework delivers a crash course on stakeholder trust: how to build it, maintain it and restore it when lost.
Frances is the best-selling author of Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business. She and her co-author Anne Morriss published their second book, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You, in June 2020.
She holds a Ph.D. in Operations and Information Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Francesca Gino
TANDON FAMILY PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Francesca Gino is an award-winning researcher who focuses on why people make the decisions they do at work, and how leaders and employees have more productive, creative and fulfilling lives. She is the Tandon Family Professor of Business Administration in the Negotiation, Organizations & Markets Unit at Harvard Business School and the author, most recently, of “Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules in Work and Life.” Gino is also affiliated with the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School, the Mind, Brain, Behavior Initiative at Harvard, and the Behavioral Insight Group at Harvard Kennedy School.
Professor Gino has been honored as one of the world’s Top 40 Business Professors under 40 and one of the world’s 50 most influential management thinkers by Thinkers 50. In addition to teaching, Professor Gino advises firms and not-for-profit organizations in the areas of negotiation, decision-making, and organizational behavior.
Hise Gibson
Colonel, United States Army
Senior Lecturer, Harvard Business School
Professor Gibson graduated from West Point Academy, where he was a member of the Division-1A Army football team. Following graduation, he was commissioned in the US Army as an Aviation Officer in the UH60 Blackhawk Helicopter. He served with distinction in various command and staff positions for over 25 years with his most recent operational assignment being as a Battalion Commander in the historic 82nd Airborne Division, earning the rank of Colonel before retiring in 2021. He has led soldiers in combat. Among his military decorations are the Legion of Merit, Bronze Star, Master Aviator badge, Parachutist badge, and the Air Assault badge.
Professor Gibson has an MS in Operations Research from the Naval Postgraduate School and a Masters in Operational Art and Science from the Air Command and Staff College. Dr. Gibson earned his Doctorate of Business Administration from Harvard University in Technology and Operations Management. Until July of 2021, Colonel Gibson served as an Academy Professor in the Systems Engineering Department at the United States Military Academy. He also established and directed the Systems Decisions and Analysis Center as well as directed the department’s core engineering sequence and engaged in strategic outreach as a Fellow at MIT Lincoln Laboratory.
Professor Gibson's research and consulting activities have been in the areas of technology integrations, operational effectiveness, leadership, leader development, human capital development, change management, and leading teams through crisis. He currently lives in Lexington, Massachusetts with his wife Nicole and two daughters.
Lane A. Glenn, PhD
President - Northern Essex Community College
Dr. Lane A. Glenn is President of Northern Essex Community College (NECC), with campuses in Haverhill and Lawrence, Massachusetts.
Dr. Glenn is focused on student success and is passionate about finding ways to help students achieve their educational goals, especially students who are underprepared for college. In addition, he is a strong advocate for colleges and universities as engines of economic and workforce development—particularly in Massachusetts Gateway Cities.
As a researcher, author and consultant, Dr. Glenn has also helped advance community colleges through his involvement on numerous regional and national boards. He is the chairman of the Massachusetts Department of Higher Education’s Task Force on Statewide Assessment; was appointed to the STEM Advisory Council by the Massachusetts governor; and chairs the International Advisory Board of the Chair Academy, an organization that provides leadership development programs for college and university leaders around the world.
Dr. Glenn has been described as “optimistic thought leader” who actively promotes the community college mission in a number of publications, on social media, and through his blog, “Running the Campus.” In 2018, he was named the “Pacesetter of the Year” by the National Council for Marketing and Public Relations for his Higher Education advocacy efforts.
He holds a PhD in Theater from Michigan State University, a master’s degree in Speech from Oklahoma State University, and a bachelor’s in English from Northeastern State University. He is proud to say he started his education at Rose State College, a community college in Midwest City, Oklahoma.
Ranjay Gulati
Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class Of 1942 Professor Of Business Administration
Ranjay Gulati is the Paul R. Lawrence MBA Class of 1942 Professor and the former Unit Head of the Organizational Behavior Unit at Harvard Business School. Until recently, he chaired the Advanced Management Program, the flagship senior leader executive program at HBS. Professor Gulati studies how “resilient” organizations—those that prosper both in good times and bad—drive growth and profitability. His work bridges strategy (establishing clear strategic pillars for growth), organizational design (reimagining purposeful and collaborative organizational systems), and leadership (fostering inspired, courageous and caring execution).
Professor Gulati was ranked as one of the top ten most cited scholars in Economics and Business over a decade by ISI-Incite. The Economist, Financial Times, and the Economist Intelligence Unit have listed him as among the top handful of business school scholars whose work is most relevant to management practice. His research has been published in leading academic journals of business, the Harvard Business Review, and a range of other outlets. He is the author of a number of books. He has been a frequent guest on CNBC and other media outlets.
Professor Gulati advises and speaks to corporations large and small around the globe. He also frequently leads small-group workshops focused on helping leadership teams of high-growth companies enhance the growth trajectory of their businesses. He has served on the advisory boards of several entrepreneurial ventures and has appeared as an expert witness in business litigations.
Professor Gulati holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, a Master’s Degree in Management from M.I.T.’s Sloan School of Management, and two Bachelor’s Degrees, in Computer Science and Economics, from Washington State University and St. Stephens College, New Delhi, respectively. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
Sandy Schultz Hessler
Professor Start Up Intensive at Central Wyoming College and Founder of Six Minutes Daily
Sandy has spent her career helping individuals and organizations develop their vision and make it a reality. She has over 30 years of experience working with business ranging in size from Fortune 50 companies to start-ups, along with a lifetime of study on human potential and consciousness. Sandy began her career in brand management at Procter & Gamble, then cofounded a marketing services start up called Imagitas that sold to Pitney Bowes in 2005. She has taught leadership, communications and marketing at Tufts University, Miami University of Ohio and Harvard Kennedy School where she served as Assistant Dean, running the Office of Career Advancement (career services).
For the last seven years Sandy has created and taught leadership classes and the Start Up Intensive, a 10-week, 200-hour boot camp in Jackson, WY. She takes great pride in witnessing the success of numerous clients and organizations around igniting their inner wisdom to manifest their powerful future through her company, Six Minutes Daily, Inc. Six Minutes Daily is currently creating accountability tools including a habit building app to help people and teams build their daily practice toward alignment, health, connections and prosperity. Her book entitled, “Six Minutes Daily,” comes out in Winter 2022.
Sandy has her undergraduate degree from Northwestern University, and advanced degrees from Harvard University, Miami University of Ohio and the University of Santa Monica. She is a mother of five and an avid hiker, snowboarder and adventurer.
Lindsay N. Hyde
Senior Lecturer of Business Administration
Lindsay is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the Entrepreneurial Management unit. She co-teaches Entrepreneurial Failure, a course focused on why start-ups fail and how founders and founding teams rebound and learn from failure.
Additionally, Lindsay is an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Moderne Ventures, a $200M venture capital fund focused on the real estate sector. She advises portfolio companies on go-to-market strategy, customer acquisition, and B2B sales.
Prior to her time at Moderne, Lindsay founded and led start-ups in the real estate and education spaces, leading her to be named one of Goldman Sachs “100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs.” She co-founded Baroo, a venture backed services-as-amenities platform used by the largest Class A multifamily owners and operators. She served as the Executive Director of Wildflower Schools Massachusetts, an early education start-up incubated in the MIT Media Lab launching Montessori microschools across the state. Lindsay began her career founding an international not-for-profit mentoring organization, Strong Women, Strong Girls, that has impacted the lives of over 10,000 women and girls globally.
In addition to her work with early stage companies, Lindsay is a Director at Monro (NASDAQ: MNRO), where she serves on the Audit and Nominating and Corporate Responsibility committees. She also serves on the Advisory Committee on Shareholder Responsibility for Harvard University.
Lindsay earned her AB, magna cum laude, in Sociology and the Studies of Women, Gender, and Sexuality from Harvard College and her MBA from Harvard Business School.
Joshua D. Margolis
JAMES DINAN AND ELIZABETH MILLER PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
UNIT HEAD, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR
CHAIR, PROGRAM FOR LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
Joshua Margolis is James Dinan and Elizabeth Miller Professor of Business Administration and the Unit Head for the Organizational Behavior unit. He is also Faculty Chair of the Program for Leadership Development. Professor Margolis’ research focuses on leading in complex situations involving tradeoffs. In particular, he focuses on the distinctive ethical challenges that arise in organizations and how managers can navigate these challenges with practical effectiveness and moral integrity, especially in perform-or-else settings.
Professor Margolis is currently engaged in research on how companies and individuals defy countervailing forces to make a significant impact and how professionals in a variety of settings navigate moral adversity and address ethical challenges with a combination of ingenuity and integrity.
Professor Margolis received his B.A. from Yale University and his A.M. (Sociology) and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Harvard University, where he was Fellow in the Program in Ethics and the Professions. He has received the Robert F. Greenhill Award, the Student Association Faculty Award for teaching excellence, the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching, and the Academy of Management award for Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior.
Jan W. Rivkin
C. ROLAND CHRISTENSEN PROFESSOR OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Jan W. Rivkin is a Professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. In the past, he has served as Faculty Chair of the MBA Program, Senior Associate Dean for Research, and head of the Strategy Unit. His research, course development, and teaching focus on two topics: business strategy and U.S. competitiveness.
Rivkin's scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Management Science, Organization Science, the Strategic Management Journal, the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, and Research Policy. Much of this work uses simulations of complex adaptive systems to examine the theoretical implications of cross-cutting interactions. His empirical work on the topic employs a mix of large-scale statistical studies, field research, and case studies.
Rivkin also co-chairs HBS's project on the competitiveness of the United States. In that role, he has worked with a faculty team to explore steps that leaders can take to improve the ability of firms in the U.S. to win in the global marketplace and support American living standards. His work in this domain focuses on (a) how managers choose to locate business activities in the United States or elsewhere and (b) how business leaders can best work with policymakers, nonprofit leaders, educators, and others to bring shared prosperity to America’s cities.
Rivkin received his Ph.D. in Business Economics from Harvard. Earlier, he studied chemical engineering and public policy at Princeton and obtained a M.Sc. in economics from the London School of Economics on a Marshall Scholarship.
Rivkin and his wife live in Newton, Massachusetts with their two sons.
Richard S. Ruback
BAKER FOUNDATION PROFESSOR
WILLARD PRESCOTT SMITH PROFESSOR OF CORPORATE FINANCE, EMERITUS
Richard S. Ruback is the Willard Prescott Smith Professor of Corporate Finance at the Harvard Business School. He is currently focusing his research in applied corporate finance, especially on corporate-control transactions and valuation. His course development work parallels his research interests. He has taught a variety of corporate finance courses throughout his career. Over the last few years, he and Royce Yudkoff have been developing and teaching a new second year case course titled “The Financial Management of Smaller Firms” and a field course called “Entrepreneurship through Acquisition”. Recently, Ruback and Yudkoff published their book, HBR Guide to Buying a Small Business. Published by Harvard Business Review Press, the book is a practical roadmap through the steps required to find, evaluate, negotiate and finance the acquisition of a smaller firm.
Ruback earned his Ph.D. in business administration at the University of Rochester in 1980 and taught at MIT's Sloan School before joining the HBS faculty as a visiting professor in 1987. He was appointed associate professor in 1988 and full professor in 1989. Ruback has served as an editor for the Journal of Financial Economics and is the author of numerous articles on corporate finance and valuation.
Ruback has served as a consultant to corporations on corporate finance issues and has acted as an independent advisor to outside directors. He also served as an expert witness on valuation and security issues.
Lori Trahan
U.S. Congresswoman, Massachusetts 3rd District
Lori Trahan was born and raised in a working-class family in Lowell, Massachusetts. Her father was a union ironworker and her mother was a domestic worker who juggled various part time jobs while raising four girls. The first in her family to graduate from college, Lori earned a scholarship to play Division 1 volleyball at Georgetown University. She joined the staff of former Congressman Marty Meehan as a scheduler, eventually working her way up to Chief of Staff. Following her public service, Lori began working in the private sector as the only female executive at a tech company before moving on to co-found a woman owned and operated consulting firm, Concire, where she advised various companies on business strategy, how to create the conditions for employees – especially women - to thrive. She and her husband, Dave, currently reside in Westford, MA and are raising two young girls, Grace and Caroline, while keeping tabs on their three grown stepsons, Thomas, Dean, and Christian.
As a member of the House Education and Labor and House Armed Services Committees, Lori is focused on fighting for working families on issues such as affordable health care, quality public education, workforce development, the environment, and working to end the pain and suffering of the opioid crisis. Lori is the first PortugueseAmerican woman elected to Congress and is a member of the New Dems and the Congressional Progressive Caucus.
Brian L. Trelstad
Senior Lecturer of Business Administration
Joseph L. Rice, III Faculty Fellow
Brian Trelstad is a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the General Management Unit, teaching an elective course on Social Entrepreneurship and Systems Change and the first-year required course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability (LCA). His teaching and research focuses on social entrepreneurship, systems change, impact investing, and the role of business in society.
Brian is also a Partner and Board Member at Bridges Fund Management, an impact investing fund that invests in health, education and environmental services business. Prior to Bridges, Brian was the Chief Investment Officer of Acumen, where he oversaw investments in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Brian is a co-chair of Impact Capital Managers, a national membership association of impact investors in the United States and a founding board member of the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE). Prior to Acumen, Brian worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company, was a lead environmental staff person at the Corporation for National Service, and has been involved in a range of non-profit and for-profit start ups.
Brian serves on the board of VisionSpring, Candid, and New Jersey Future and is both a Kauffman Fellow of the Center for Venture Education and a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
Mitch Weiss
Professor of Management Practice, Richard L. Menschel Faculty Fellow
Mitch Weiss is a Professor of Management Practice in the Entrepreneurial Management unit and the Richard L. Menschel Faculty Fellow at the Harvard Business School. He created and teaches the school's course on Public Entrepreneurship—on public leaders and private entrepreneurs who invent a difference in the world. He also teaches The Entrepreneurial Manager in the first year of the MBA Program. He was a 2015 recipient of the Apgar Award for Innovation in Teaching and a Greenhill Award recipient for 2015-2016. He helped build the Young American Leaders Program at Harvard Business School and is a senior advisor to the Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. Mitch's work and the Public Entrepreneurship course has been referenced in The Wall Street Journal, CNBC, Politico, and other outlets. He is the author of the forthcoming We the Possibility from Harvard Business Review Press (2020).
Prior to joining HBS in 2014, Mitch was Chief of Staff and a partner to Boston’s Mayor Thomas Menino. Mitch helped shape New Urban Mechanics, Boston’s municipal innovation strategy, and make it a model for peer-produced government and change. He also championed Boston’s Innovation District as a regional platform for entrepreneurship and growth.
Mitch contributed to Boston’s educational reform agenda, including its District-Charter compact. He led speechwriting for the Mayor’s Inaugural and State of the City addresses. In April 2013, he guided the Mayor’s Office response to the Marathon Bombings and played a key role in starting One Fund Boston.
Mitch has presented on government innovation at 10 Downing Street and the World Bank. He was recognized by the Boston Business Journal as one of Boston’s “Top 40 under 40” and by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce as one of Boston’s “Ten Outstanding Young Leaders.”
From 2006 to 2009, Mitch was the first Executive Director of the Tobin Project, a catalyst for transformative research in the social sciences. Prior to his roles in the public and social sectors, Mitch worked at Merrill Lynch & Co. where he focused primarily on mergers and acquisitions for many well-recognized food companies.
Mitch holds an A.B. with Honors in Economics from Harvard University and a Master in Business Administration from Harvard Business School, where he was a George Baker Scholar.