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Frances Frei

Frances Frei

Global Thought leader on Leadership & Strategy; Professor of Technology and Operations Management, Harvard Business School

Harvard Business School professor Frances Frei teaches Fortune 500 CEOs how to lead. A global thought leader on diversity, strategy, and culture, the Ivy League professor and corporate advisor-of-choice has made a career for herself helping large organizations evolve their behavior to achieve better outcomes for both their employees and their customers. From sparking a gender makeover at Harvard’s MBA program to acting as a personal advisor to the world’s most effective executives, Frei’s calling is to help leaders create impact.

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Bio

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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 improved 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.

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. 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 co-author Anne Morriss recently published their latest book, Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader’s Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You. Hailed as “the definitive guide to leadership today,” Unleashed gives readers permission to look beyond themselves and focus on the true challenge of leadership: how to unlock the potential of others.

Frances holds a Ph.D. in Operations and Information Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

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Topics

Topics

Building (and Rebuilding) Trust

The Inclusive Leader

Uncommon Service

Videos

Videos

How to build (and rebuild) trust | Frances Frei
Frances Frei, Harvard Business School Professor

Books

Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You
Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You
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Audible sample Follow the Authors Anne Morriss + Follow Frances X. Frei + Follow Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business
Audible sample Follow the Authors Anne Morriss + Follow Frances X. Frei + Follow Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business
Read More →

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