Dr. Herminia Ibarra is the Charles Handy Professor of Organisational Behaviour at London Business School and one of the world's top management thinkers, as ranked by Thinkers50. Her work is dedicated to addressing the most important challenges of our time, including career reinvention, leadership transitions, and the crucial role of the private sector in achieving gender equality in top management. Her research is characterized by its rigor and high relevance to modern corporate and individual development.
Ibarra’s profound academic authority stems from over 25 years on the faculties of both INSEAD and Harvard Business School, following her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University. Her revolutionary approach to leadership, articulated in her best-selling book Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader, upends traditional, introspective advice by urging professionals to "act first" in order to change their way of thinking. This work received the Axiom Business Book Silver Award and has been translated into multiple languages.
A respected voice in both academia and global governance, Ibarra is a Fellow of the British Academy, a member of the World Economic Forum’s Expert Network, and a former Chair of the Harvard Business School Visiting Committee. Her article, “The Leader as Coach,” was honored with the 2019 Warren Bennis Prize for the best leadership article in the Harvard Business Review, a publication where her insights frequently appear alongside The Financial Times and The Wall Street Journal. As a highly sought-after international speaker for organizations and conferences like TEDx and the World Business Forum, Ibarra provides practical frameworks for driving change. Her presentations equip leaders with the five vital skills for corporate transformation—cross-cutting, collaborating, coaching, culture-shaping, and connecting—and show how to increase one's impact by redefining their job, expanding their network, and being more playful.
