IMD business school for management and leadership courses

David Bach joined IMD in 2020, and assumed the role of Dean of Innovation and Programs in 2021. As part of the Executive Committee, David leads efforts to enhance IMD’s global reach and impact through both programmatic and pedagogical innovation.

Prior to joining IMD, David was Professor of Practice of Management and Deputy Dean for Executive Programs at the Yale School of Management (SOM), playing a critical role on Yale SOM’s leadership team over eight years. Before joining Yale SOM, David held a number of senior positions at IE Business School in Madrid.

David’s teaching and research focuses on business-government relations, non-market strategy and stakeholder management. His course “The End of Globalization?” received the 2018 Ideas Worth Teaching Award from the Aspen Institute. He is one of the architects of the Global Network for Advanced Management, an alliance of 31 top global business schools of which IMD has been a member since 2012.

David completed his undergraduate studies at Yale in political science and international studies and earned a PhD in political science from the University of California, Berkeley.

Seán Meehan is Martin Hilti Professor of Marketing and Change Management and Dean of Faculty. He is an award-winning author on customer-centricity and how organizations can deploy customer-led strategies to deliver superior performance. He works with senior executives from companies across the globe to help them deliver strong results through a tireless focus on customer value creation.

Meehan’s work shows how businesses that believe putting customers interests ahead of those of all other stakeholders perform better for all stakeholders. While this might seem obvious, it is incredibly difficult for organizations to become truly customer-led, and even harder to maintain, as he shows in his 2021 book, The Customer Copernicus. The book’s insights won praise from former Unilever CEO Paul Polman, Danfoss President and CEO Kim Fausing and DBS CEO Piyush Gupta, among others.

This research provides a toolkit for how businesses can become and stay truly customer-led, particularly as they face the new challenges of the post-pandemic period. The key component is an outside-in approach that involves taking a lead from customers and pioneering on their behalf, rather than the prevailing inside-out belief systems of most organizations, who see things from their own perspectives and are driven by their own internal agendas and more immediate, proximate and accessible concerns.

Meehan has applied this analysis to companies such as Amazon, Deliveroo, easyJet and Sky, which have all succeeded by putting the customer at the center of value creation, but also to Tesco, O2 and Wells Fargo, former customer-led successes that ended up losing their way.

He has co-authored two other important books on the subject: Simply Better: Winning and Keeping Customers by Delivering What Matters Most and Beyond the Familiar: Long Term Growth through Customer Focus and Innovation. The first of these was named Marketing Book of the Year by the American Marketing Association in 2005 after it challenged the widespread notion that companies succeed by small differentiations in their offering and showed that getting the basics right was far more important.

He has also been published in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, Business Strategy Review, strategy+business, Marketing Research, Marketing Science Institute Reports, the Financial Times and the Wall Street Journal.

At IMD, Meehan has designed and delivered leadership development programs for companies such as Agricultural Bank of China, Air France-KLM, Caterpillar, COFRA, Geberit, Hilti, Julius Baer, Lindt & Sprüngli, MasterCard International, Mitsubishi Chemical Holdings, PWC, Sandvik, Schindler, Swiss Re, Telefonica, Toyota, and Vodafone.

He has also directed the IMD MBA program, IMD’s Chief Marketing Officer Roundtable, its flagship program Orchestrating Winning Performance, and its most senior leadership program Breakthrough Program for Senior Executives.

Meehan joined IMD in 1997, having previously worked with Deloitte where he was a Marketing Director and Arthur Andersen where he also worked in consulting and qualified as a Certified Public Accountant.

Anand Narasimhan is Shell Professor of Global Leadership and Dean of Research at IMD. He is a member of the Executive Committee, sharing the management responsibility of the Faculty with the President.

In his capacity as Shell Professor of Global Leadership at IMD, Anand works with organizations to help transform leadership capabilities through experiential, observational and reflective learning that emphasizes self-awareness, collaboration, and culture-building.

Anand is a pioneer in the application of psychodynamic insights that help leaders understand how unconscious forces shape the dynamics of top teams and boards of directors. He combines insights from research on group dynamics, psychoanalysis, and governance to reveal the patterns and consequences of leadership behavior. His research on institutional change, organization design, social networks and emotional help in organizations has appeared in prestigious publications such as Academy of Management Journal, Annual Review of Sociology, Organization Science, Organizational Dynamics, and Personnel Psychology.

He has served on the faculty of the London Business School and the Imperial College Business School, and has had visiting appointments at the Indian School of Business and Vanderbilt University’s Owen Graduate School of Management.

Anand holds a degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, an MBA specializing in Human Resource Management from XLRI, and a PhD in Management from Vanderbilt University.

Yassine Ayadi is Chief of Staff at IMD. He is responsible for improving the individual and collective effectiveness of the Executive Committee, advising the President on strategic priorities for the institution, and maintaining alignment between departments through the provision of operational guidance and support on key projects. He is also the Secretary of the IMD Foundation Board.

Prior to joining IMD, Ayadi spent four years in Associate and Senior Associate roles at PwC’s strategic consultancy arm Strategy& in Paris, France, and was instrumental in launching their Casablanca office. He joined Strategy& after two years in PwC’s selective rotational program Parcours Croisé.

Ayadi holds a Master’s in management from HEC Paris and a Master’s in international management from the CEMS Global Alliance in Management Education. He is also an IMD alumnus, having completed IMD’s High Performance Leadership program.

Anna Dunand is Chief Business Development Officer at IMD. She leads all corporate business development activities including custom programs, the European field sales force, Nexus, and all sponsoring and membership activities.

She joined IMD in 2004 and has held various positions including research associate and learning manager, where she worked with faculty in delivery, before moving to business development in 2010.

Prior to joining IMD, Dunand worked with Accenture in Zürich, Switzerland, as a consultant in the financial services sector in the areas of change management, human performance, business development, and business processes.

She is a former golfer and represented Sweden in numerous international competitions, including 10 years as a member of the Swedish National team.

Anna holds a Master of Science in International Business from Göteborg University, Sweden, and a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, from Oklahoma State University, USA. She is also an IMD alumna having completed High Performance Leadership and Advanced High Performance Leadership.

Delia Fischer is Chief Communication Officer at IMD. She oversees IMD’s external, internal, social media and multimedia communications. She has been a member of the IMD Executive Committee top management team since January 2020.

Under Fischer’s guidance, IMD is rapidly developing and expanding its existing communications program and platforms to build on its existing reputation for thought leadership excellence, engagement, and innovation.

Prior to joining IMD, Fischer was Global Head of Corporate Communications for The Adecco Group, the world’s leading HR solutions partner, managing an international team from their headquarters in Zurich. She also served as FIFA’s Head of Media during a 15-year career overseeing communications for FIFA World Cups as well as the global football governance crisis. She is a trained journalist.

Fischer holds a Master’s in business science with a major in sports management from the University of Economics (WU) in Vienna. She is also an IMD alumna, having completed IMD’s High Performance Leadership program.

Peggy Le Roux is Chief Finance and Administrative Officer at IMD. Joining in November 2019 as Chief Finance and Administrative Officer, she leads the Financial and Internal Controlling, Accounting, Tax, Treasury, and Campus Services. She is also the secretary of the Audit Committee (AFRC).

Le Roux came to IMD after spending 15 years at Richemont, including 10 years at Jaeger-LeCoultre where she took on the role of Chief Finance Officer and became a member of the Maison Executive Committee in 2011. Prior to Richemont, she worked with EY for seven years in Paris and London.

Le Roux is a graduate of the ESCP Europe Business School as well as an IMD Alumnus, having attended its Leading Digital Business Transformation and High Performance Leadership programs. She has also attended a customized program with Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Executive Committee.

Louis Leclézio is Chief Digital and Customer Experience Officer at IMD. He oversees IMD’s technology, operations, and marketing, and is primarily responsible for enhancing customer and employee experience through digital transformation.

Under his leadership, IMD has expanded its technology-enabled pedagogical innovation, ensuring this is strongly embedded and perfectly supported by IMD’s IT infrastructure.

Leclézio rejoined IMD in 2020, after first holding leadership roles in IT from 1997-2008. From 2008, he spent 11 years at Bunge, a leader in agribusiness, food, and ingredients, with more than 20,000 employees in 40 countries, where he successfully defined the global IT strategy and roadmap and led the company’s IT & data transformation programs. He led the multicultural team responsible for implementing process automation to enable the integration and harmonization of business units.

He is a graduate of Gonzaga University in the US and is an IMD alumnus, having completed IMD’s High Performance Leadership program.

Laurent Tranchida is Chief People Officer at IMD. He oversees the recruitment and retention of IMD’s most important asset: its people.

He joined the institution in 2018 after a long career in corporate human resources, and has been a member of the top management team at IMD since its Executive Committee was established in January 2020.

Tranchida came to IMD after more than a decade at Sidel, a world leader in FMCG packaging, where he held a variety of human resources leadership roles in Paris, Le Havre and Zurich. Before Sidel, he spent 15 years at Heidelberger Druckmaschinen in Paris, where he held a number of functions spanning HR, training and internal communications, technical publishing and client services.

He holds two Master’s degrees, one in management and human resources development from École des Ressources Humaines, IGS-RH in Lyon, and another in executive coaching from Cergy-Pontoise University. He is also an IMD alumnus, having completed the High Performance Leadership and Orchestrating Winning Performance programs.