Family Business Center

Sameh Abadir is a Professor of Leadership and Negotiation at IMD.

He is the co-director of IMD’s Negotiating for Value Creation program (NVC) and teaches in IMD’s signature program Orchestrating Winning Performance (OWP).

Professor Abadir’s major research, teaching and consulting field of expertise is organizational behavior, particularly in the areas of stress management, leadership strategy, negotiation skills and business agility. He is the co-author of the book e-Negotiations.

Prior to joining IMD, Professor Abadir was an Adjunct Professor at INSEAD where he taught international negotiations and crisis management as well as directed a variety of executive programs.

In addition to his academic experience, Sameh Abadir was an executive at SODEXO from 1988 to 2003, one of the world's largest multinational corporations. He also served in the Egyptian Special Forces between 1985 and 1988.

His corporate and military experience has given him a unique perspective in the classroom and has informed his leadership of behavioral change and ability to acquire results under stress. He also specializes in building team agility and MENA geopolitics.

Sameh Abadir holds a PhD in Economics from Paris I University (France) and an MBA from the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences Po, France). Sameh teaches in French, English and Arabic.

Ben Bryant is a Professor of Leadership and Organization at IMD in Lausanne and the director of the IMD CEO Learning Center. He holds the Kristian Gerhard Jebsen Chair for Responsible Leadership. Ben is a highly skilled educator, executive team coach, and speaker. He works with a wide range of CEOs and their executive teams and presents his research at many leading academic institutions.

Through IMD’s CEO Learning Center, Ben leads an experienced faculty team that creates learning events for senior executives in trusting environments. The Center leverages the collective and individual potential of leaders by helping them to learn new ways of working together and to unlearn unhelpful patterns of beliefs and behaviors.

For more than 20 years, Ben has accumulated extensive experience in the facilitation and development of senior executives at IMD Lausanne, London Business School, and the Australian Graduate School of Management. He has worked globally in Europe, the US, Asia and Australia for a wide range of leading companies including Oracle, LVMH, Daimler, Maersk, Adecco, Mars, British Telecom, GlaxoSmithKline, Zurich Financial Services, Standard Chartered Bank, Emirates Airlines, Mahindra, and Danish Broadcasting. He has also worked closely with numerous smaller entrepreneurial businesses.

Ben’s models and frameworks of leadership have been used in the development of top teams, senior and mid-level executives, and in the development of strategy, execution and change. His research into cultures of innovation has been used to guide organizations to generate new sources of value creation.

Ben frequently works with senior teams to help them build a climate of trust, openness, challenge and commitment. He is passionate about helping managers to reduce boundaries created by functional silos and national borders and to manage conflict and tension. His research also focuses on the reflective capabilities and the “mindfulness” of leaders in complex organizations and the capacity of leaders to to learn from experience and context.

Ben has a PhD in Organizational Change from the University of London (London Business School) as well as an MBA from the University of NSW and undergraduate degrees and diplomas in Sociology, Psychology, Philosophy, History of Education, French Language Literature and Culture, Music, and the Humanities..

Professor Cossin is the founder and director of the IMD Global Board Center, the originator of the Four Pillars of Board Effectiveness methodology and an advocate of Stewardship. He is the author and co-author of books such as Inspiring Stewardship, book chapters (such as Governance Risk: A Guide for Investors) and many articles in the fields of governance, investments, risks and stewardship, several of which have obtained citations of excellence or other awards.

He works with owners, boards and senior leaders to provide the latest thinking on best-in-class governance, board effectiveness, the governance and selection of investments, board dynamics and strategy design. He favors an adaptive and interactive approach to finding distinctive solutions for organizations on a wide range of governance topics. His latest research focuses on stewardship, how we can foster organizations to have long-term positive social impact while creating economic value for all. His past research has dealt with optimizing governance in critical decision making, M&As and risks.

In his work with boards, Professor Cossin helps them enhance organizational performance through strategy involvement, best-in-class decision making, enhancing board culture and general governance (including board restructurings). As a clinician of governance excellence in many regions of the world, he is an advocate of adapting practices to the social, geopolitical, technological and economic transformation through distinctive solutions allowing for long term wealth creation.

He also looks at the latest approaches to risk issues. His work addresses not only technical risks (for which he uses his finance background) but also those arising from a number of different factors: psychological biases, social and cultural environments, technological changes (from AI to cybersecurity), strategic choices and/or from governance structure (for which he levers his long experience with many leading organizations).

Professor Cossin is an advisor and/or executive teacher with the United Nations, central banks of several countries, ministries as well as sovereign wealth funds and supranational organizations (European Central Bank, IFC, IOC), the boards or executive committees of corporations, financial institutions and funds in Europe, Asia, Americas, Africa and the Middle East. He gained significant experience working with the oil and gas industry (Schlumberger, Shell, Sinopec, Saudi Aramco, Qatar Petroleum, and others) and the banking industry (HSBC, Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, ICBC and others), but he has also worked with many other industries (media, luxury goods, retail, shipping, asset management, etc.). He also advises some leading non-profit organisations on governance (UNICEF, the Red Cross). He is a member of the Risk Who's Who Society, the American Finance Association, the Eastern Finance Association, and the European Finance Association.

Professor Cossin holds a PhD from Harvard University (Robert C. Merton Chair) and is a former Fulbright Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Department of Economics (USA). He is a former student of ENS rue d'Ulm (France) and holds master degrees from Sorbonne University and EHESS (France).

Before joining IMD, Didier Cossin worked for Goldman Sachs (London, UK) and pharmaceutical company Roussel-Uclaf (Tokyo, Japan) as it was considering an initial offering on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. He has taught at Harvard University, where he obtained two Derek Bok Awards for excellence in teaching, and was associate then full professor at HEC, University of Lausanne (1993-2002). He chaired the university’s Department of Management (1995-1997); was the Director of both its Institute of Banking & Financial Management (1997-2002) and its PhD in Management (1997-1999). At IMD, he has led or co-led the pension fund, the recruiting process, the faculty policies committee, client engagement initiatives and a strategy review as well as other administrative responsibilities supporting the success of the organization.

He has received distinctions such as the UBS Chair in Banking and Finance at IMD, the Febelfin BFI Chair and the Deloitte Risk Management Chair from other institutions.

Professor Cossin directs the High Performance Boards program at IMD as of June 2011.

Alfredo De Massis is an award-winning expert in the management and governance of family enterprises. His research has advanced understanding of how family business leaders balance economic and non-economic goals in strategic decision making and manage the paradox of tradition and innovation. At IMD he provides intellectual contributions by working on collaboration and scientific advisory activities within the Wild Group Chair in Family Business.

De Massis is one of the world's leading family business academics. In February 2022 he was included in Family Capital’s 100 Family Business Influencers list for his thought leadership in the family business field. In 2020 he was ranked as the most influential and productive author of the decade in the family business research field in a bibliometric study published in the European Journal of Family Business, and in 2015 Family Capital named him as one of the world’s 25 star family business professors.

His research focuses on the management, governance and behavioral aspects of family enterprises and how to ensure their prosperity across generations. His work examines how they align economic goals with other objectives such as maintaining family harmony and control of the business, creating jobs for the next generation, succession planning, and nurturing the reputation of the family in its community. He shows that successful family firms excel at leveraging their tradition, history, and heritage as strategic resources to enable innovation.

He also works closely with large and small businesses in several countries to help them build rigorous and reliable knowledge to promote long-term prosperity across generations. He recently helped companies and institutions including the UK government to address the new challenges that COVID-19 created for family firms, such as the need for rapid and unexpected succession, the dehumanization of relationships due to remote working, the effects of emotional vulnerabilities, and the salience of patrimonial and liquidity issues for families in business.

De Massis' prolific writings include seven books, notably the Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Family Business and Family Business Studies: An Annotated Bibliography, and more than 150 articles in leading academic and professional journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Academy of Management Perspectives, California Management Review, Family Business Review, Small Business Economics, Journal of Small Business Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Academy of Management Learning & Education, Research Policy and Global Strategy Journal.

Due to its economic and practical relevance, his research has been featured in numerous media outlets including the Financial Times, Harvard Business Review, Il Sole 24 Ore, and RAI. He is also an in-demand public speaker and is regularly invited to give keynote speeches at conferences, lectures to professional and academic audiences, and media interviews.

He also serves as Chairman of the Scientific Board and member of the steering committee of FA.B.R.I., [AD1] a non-profit association dedicated to Italian family enterprises, as Co-Director and Chairman of the International Advisory Board of the Observatory on Italian Family Offices, and as member of the Scientific Board of the Italian Family Officer Association (AIFO). In addition, he has been Chair of the Strategic Interest Group on Family Business Research at the European Academy of Management (EURAM) and is a member of the Academic Advisory Board of the Institute for Family Business (IFB). He was previously Chairman of the European Leadership Council and a member of the Global Board of the STEP Project for Family Enterprising founded by Babson College.

In addition to his role at IMD, De Massis remains Professor of Entrepreneurship and Family Business at the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano in Italy, where he founded the Unibz Centre for Family Business Management, and he continues to support family business research projects at Lancaster University Management School’s Centre for Family Business in the UK, which he previously directed. He formerly served as a professor at the University of Bergamo, where he co-founded the Center for Young and Family Enterprise.

He is also Editor of Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice and Associate Editor of Family Business Review, two prestigious and influential journals in the field of family business, and Editor of FamilyBusiness.org, a US social media platform dedicated to sharing learning resources with family business practitioners.

He serves on the editorial boards of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Journal of Management Studies, and Journal of Family Business Strategy, and has been guest editor of more than 20 leading journals’ special issues on family business topics.

Before embarking on his academic career, De Massis worked as a manager for SCS Consulting, a strategy consultant at Accenture, and as a financial analyst at the Italian Stock Exchange.

Selected publications

Are narcissistic CEOs good or bad for family firm innovation? (Human Relations, 2022)

Mining the past: History scripting strategies and competitive advantage in a family business (Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 2022)

Entrepreneurial by design: How organizational design affects family and nonfamily firms’ opportunity exploitation (Journal of Management Studies, 2020)

Managing the tradition and innovation paradox in family firms: A family imprinting perspective (Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 2019)

Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods for Family Business (Edward Elgar, 2020)

Entrepreneurial orientation and innovation in family SMEs: Unveiling the (actual) impact of the Board of Directors (Journal of Business Venturing, 2018)

Financial wealth, socioemotional wealth and IPO underpricing in family firms: A two-stage gamble model (Academy of Management Journal, 2018)

Innovation through tradition: Lessons from innovative family businesses and directions for future research (Academy of Management Perspectives, 2016)

Recognition

Named on Family Capital’s 100 Family Business Influencers list (2022)

Ranked as most influential and productive family business author of the decade (2020)

Named by Family Capital as one of the world’s 25 star family business professors (2015)

Education

Master of Science (Management Engineering)

Politecnico di Milano

PhD (Management, Economics, and Industrial Engineering)

Politecnico di Milano

Stéphane Garelli is Professor Emeritus of World Competitiveness at IMD and Professor at the University of Lausanne.

He has founded the IMD World Competitiveness Centre and has pioneered research in this field for 30 years.

Professor Garelli is closely connected to the world of business. He is, among others, Chairman of the Board of Directors of "Le Temps", the leading French language Swiss newspaper. He was formerly Chairman of the Board of the Sandoz Financial and Banking Holding, and member of the board of the Banque Edouard Constant.

Professor Garelli was the Managing Director of the World Economic Forum and of the Davos Symposium for many years. For twelve years he was also permanent senior adviser to the European management of Hewlett-Packard.

He is a member of a number of institutes, such as: China Enterprise Management Association, Board of the ‘Fondation Jean Monet pour l'Europe’, The Swiss Academy of Engineering Sciences, the Mexican Council for Competitiveness, etc. and an advisory committee member of the Thai Management Association. He is also a member of the International Olympic Committee commission on Sustainability and Legacy

He is the author of numerous publications on competitiveness and global business, and he published his best-selling book "Top Class Competitors - How Nations, Firms and Individuals Succeed in the New World of Competitiveness" with Wiley. His latest book in French is: “Etes-vous un tigre, un chat ou un dinosaure’, chez Slatkine, Genève.

He was a member of the Constitutional Assembly of his local state - Vaud, Switzerland from 1999 to 2002.

Stéphane Garelli holds a PhD in economics from the University of Lausanne.

As a former Olympic finalist, award-winning writer, executive coach, and speaker with more than 20 years of corporate experience with large multinationals, Susan Goldsworthy brings knowledge from the fields of sport, business and neuroscience to her leadership development work. She focuses on how leadership needs to change in an increasingly uncertain world, working with people and companies to turn knowledge into behavior to create the conditions for healthy high performance.

Goldsworthy believes that our current way of working and living is unsustainable – not only for ourselves, but for other species that share our planet – so the need for change with new narratives is critical. This includes a change in the style and type of leadership of organizations. No one person has all the answers, so the model of "power over" needs to be replaced by one of "power with" to cultivate conditions where people can flourish and co-create solutions to the challenges organizations face. This means uniting and working across departments, industries, cultures, and age groups, with a focus on inclusivity and diversity.

Goldsworthy has worked at senior management level in both publicly and privately owned companies in Japan, America and Europe, and has extensive experience in leading global communications, culture, brand management and diversity programs. She has also run her own successful business in leadership development, executive coaching and change communications for more than a decade. She is therefore able to offer expert guidance to individuals, teams, and companies on how organizations can develop clear, consistent, and credible narratives and instill a culture of sustainable high performance.

Notably, she has a long list of postgraduate qualifications and was one of the first people in the world to be awarded an Executive Masters in the Neuroscience of Leadership. Meanwhile, her doctoral research with Hult Ashridge International Business School explores [AD1] how leaders have a responsibility to co-create conditions for hope and agency in the current world context. As a highly qualified C-suite executive coach, she is also trained in the use of a number of psychometric assessment tools.

Before embarking on her studies, Goldsworthy had a successful international swimming career during which she was an Olympic finalist, medal winner at the European Championships and Commonwealth Games and British record holder for five years.

She is co-author of three award-winning books. The recently released Where the Wild Things Were is a story for all ages about leadership, responsibility, hope and biodiversity loss, and won an Axiom Business Book Awards Bronze Medal in 2020. Meanwhile, Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential through Secure Base Leadership, written with Duncan Coombe and George Kohlrieser in 2012, and Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time, co-authored with Walter McFarland in 2013, were both named among Soundview’s best business books of the year and won Axiom Business Book Award Silver Medals.

Goldsworthy works with a number of multinational clients across a wide range of industries. Her work with aviation technology group SITA won gold in the Excellence in Executive Education category of the 2021 Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards. The category is specifically for executive education providers delivering targeted programs for specific clients. Goldsworthy and her team were honored for their work on the SITA 5.0 Leadership Journey, an IMD custom program for the company's top 200 executives.

In addition, she is Associate Director of IMD's CLEAR (Cultivating leadership Energy through Awareness and Reflection) senior leadership program and Co-Director of the new IMD Executive Coaching Certificate.

She is a fellow of the Institute of Data & Marketing, a member of the Chartered Institute of Marketing, and the International Coaching Federation.

Selected publications

Can we have two golds? (Today's Manager, 2021)

Recovery: The forgotten aspect of high performance (Today's Manager, 2021)

Jan Van Hasenbroek: A 'red-pencil' leader at a crossroads (IMD, 2020)

Where the Wild Things Were (IMD, 2019)

Choosing Change: How Leaders and Organizations Drive Results One Person at a Time (McGraw Hill, 2013)

Care to Dare: Unleashing Astonishing Potential through Secure Base Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2012)

Recognition

Chief Learning Officer Learning in Practice Awards gold medal for Excellence in Executive Education (2021)

Axiom Business Book Awards bronze medal winner (2020)

Axiom Business Book Awards double silver medal winner (2014)

Named on Soundview best business books of the year list (2013 and 2014)

Education

BA (Hons) (Journalism and Industrial Psychology)

San Diego State University

MSc (Consulting and Coaching for Change)

HEC/University of Oxford

Executive Masters (Neuroscience of Leadership)

Middlesex University/NeuroLeadership Institute

PhD (Organizational Change) (finalizing)

Ashridge Hult International Business School

Jennifer Jordan is a social psychologist and is Professor of Leadership and Organizational Behaviour at IMD.

Professor Jordan's teaching, research, and consulting focus on the areas of digital leadership, ethics, influence, and power. Professor Jordan has received specialized training and certifications in lie- and truthfulness-detection, as well as in conflict resolution within organizations.

Her work in these areas has appeared in several scientific journals including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Journal of Management, Business Ethics Quarterly, Journal of Business Ethics, Psychological Science, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, and Journal of Experimental Social Psychology. She was also a contributor to the books, Leadership at the Crossroads: Psychology and Leadership and The Handbook of Organizational and Managerial Wisdom, as well as an editor of one of the seminal scientific books on wisdom, Handbook of Wisdom: Psychological Perspectives. Her work has been mentioned in mainstream publications from The New York Times to De Volkskrant (Netherlands).

Prior to joining IMD, Professor Jordan was an Associate Professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the University of Groningen in The Netherlands and a post-doctoral fellow at the Kellogg School of Management and Tuck School of Business in the United States.

Professor Jordan also served as a visiting scholar at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin, Germany. Professor Jordan received her doctoral degree and two masters degrees (Masters of Philosophy and Masters of Science in Psychology) from Yale University (United States). She is a member of the editorial board of the journals Leadership Quarterly and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.

Dr Leleux is the Stephan Schmidheiny Professor of Entrepreneurship and Finance at IMD in Lausanne (Switzerland), where he was also director of the MBA program (2006-2008) and director of Research and Development (2004-2008). He is currently the co-Director of Foundations for Business Leadership (FBL).

He was previously Visiting Professor of Entrepreneurship at INSEAD and Director of the 3i VentureLab and Associate Professor and Zubillaga Chair in Finance and Entrepreneurship at Babson College, Wellesley, MA (USA) from 1994 to 1999. He obtained his PhD at INSEAD, specializing in Corporate Finance and Venture Capital.

He is the author of "Winning Sustainability Strategies: finding purpose, driving innovation and executing change" published in 2019 by Palgrave Macmillan, “Private Equity 4.0: Reinventing Value Creation” (Wiley, 2015), “Investing Private Capital in Emerging and Frontier Market SMEs” (IFC, 2009), “Nurturing Science-Based Startups: An International Case Perspective” (Springer Verlag, 2008), “From Microfinance to Small Business Finance” (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), and “A European Casebook on Entrepreneurship and New Ventures” (Prentice Hall, 1996). His teaching cases have earned more than 20 European case writing awards and he has been ranked #19 in the Case Center’s top-40 best-selling case authors for 2018/19.

Prior to his academic career, he was the head of corporate venturing for a leading agribusiness conglomerate in South East Asia. Dr Leleux earned a M.Sc. in Agricultural Engineering and a M.Ed. in Natural Sciences from the Catholic University of Louvain (Belgium) and an MBA from Virginia Tech (USA)

Jean-François Manzoni is the President of IMD, where he also serves as the Nestlé Professor. 

His research, teaching, and consulting activities are focused on leadership, the development of high-performance organizations and corporate governance.

At the organisational level, Professor Manzoni studies the content of change (including the use of levers such as strategy, structure and systems), the management of the change process and the role of leaders therein. His work in this area has appeared in several books, articles and over 30 cases, four of which received Case of the Year Awards from the European Foundation for Management Development or the European Case Clearing House. He also acted as content expert in the development of a ground-breaking computer-based change management simulation, the Change Pro Simulation®.

At the individual level, Professor Manzoni studies how leaders can create a high-performance work environment and what they can do to modify their leadership style in that direction. This stream of research has led to several articles and a book entitled The Set-Up to Fail Syndrome: How good managers cause great people to fail (with Jean-Louis Barsoux). This book, which is built on Manzoni's and Barsoux's initial Harvard Business Review article introducing the term "set-up-to-fail syndrome", received two Book of the Year awards and is being discussed in undergraduate, MBA and executive development programs all over the world.

On the corporate governance side, Professor Manzoni focuses on interpersonal dynamics within the Boardroom and between management and the Board. Ongoing research examining the impact of interpersonal dynamics on increasingly diverse Boards of Directors received the Research Award on Leadership & Corporate Governance from the Association of Executive Search Consultants. A Fellow of the Singapore Institute of Directors, Professor Manzoni is currently serving on the Board of Keppel Corp., an international diversified group listed on the Singapore stock exchange, and previously served on the Boards of Singapore's Civil Service College and of AACSB International, the world's largest business education alliance.

A citizen of Canada and France, Professor Manzoni received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School. He had earlier graduated from l'Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales de Montréal and worked with Ernst and Young in Montreal before receiving an MBA from McGill University.

Prior to re-joining IMD in 2016, Professor Manzoni had served on the IMD faculty between 2004 and 2010. He also previously served on the faculty of INSEAD, in Singapore and in Fontainebleau. While at INSEAD he founded and directed for four years the PwC Research Initiative on High Performance Organizations. He later directed the Global Leadership Centre supporting the school's leadership-related coaching, teaching and research activities throughout the world

The recipient of several awards for excellence in teaching, Professor Manzoni is a frequent keynote speaker. He also performed consulting, top management team support and leadership development work for several international organisations, which has led him to work in more than thirty countries over the years.

He currently serves or served on several International Advisory Panels, including Digital Switzerland, Singapore's Public Service Division and the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA).

Joachim Schwass is Professor Emeritus of Family Business at IMD and founder of the IMD Global Family Business Center.

He has taught Family Business and Entrepreneurship with a main focus on generational and owner related issues. He has lectured and conducted Family Business programs around the globe, and advised many of globally leading family businesses.

Prior to joining IMD, Professor Schwass was Managing Director of several companies which were part of his own family's business. He was managing industrial manufacturing businesses in Australia and USA as well as an international trading business in Switzerland. He started up several international businesses.

Educated in Germany, France and Switzerland, Professor Joachim Schwass attended graduate studies at Technische Universität Berlin and Université de Fribourg where he obtained a Lic rer pol and a Dr rer pol.

His book “Wise Growth Strategies in Leading Family Businesses” was published in 2005, in German in 2007, in Spanish in 2008, in Mandarin in 2012 and in Japanese in 2015. He is the lead author of "Wise Wealth", which was published in 2010, and in Mandarin in 2013. He is the lead author of “Wise Family Business, Family Identity Steering Brand Success”, which was published in 2016.

He directed the Annual Distinguished Family Business Award for 10 years. He was Executive Director of the Family Business Network (FBN) for 10 years and served on the Board until 2010.

Paul Strebel works with boards of directors and top management teams as an educator and advisor on strategic vision and the resolution of boardroom conflicts. In addition to personal experience as a board director, he has facilitated interactive workshops and seminars on best in-class boards and strategic breakthroughs for multinationals in Europe, U.S., South Africa, the Middle East and S.E. Asia.

He is the originator of several managerial frameworks:

Outpacing Business Strategies (developed together with Xavier Gilbert): Companies shouldn’t opt exclusively for low delivered cost, or high perceived value, but rather deploy them in sequence to drive the industry’s evolution and beat the competition. 

Employee Compacts: To make organizational change effective, management must understand why employees resist change, take account of the forces of change and resistance and offer employees correspondingly tailored compacts.

Contingent Governance: Board directors are more effective when they are aware of the four basic roles of the board that reflect support and control, and how the board should shift focus between the roles to deal with internal and external challenges. 

Redefined Stakeholder Capitalism: Executives can reconcile shareholders with other stakeholders, by focusing rigorously on creating long-term shareholder value, based on win-win initiatives with value creating stakeholders, while avoiding the value-destroying traps and ESG risks associated with others.

Professor Strebel has twice received the Award for Research on Leadership from the Association of Executive Search Consultants and has won several case study awards from the European Foundation for Management Development. He has published articles in the MIT Sloan Management Review, Harvard Business Review, California Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Long Range Planning, among numerous others and has contributed on governance issues to the business press.

Paul Strebel's books include, Breakpoints: How Managers Exploit Radical Business Change (Harvard Business School Press); The Change Pact: Building Commitment to Ongoing Change (FT Prentice Hall); Trajectory Management: Leading a Business over Time (Wiley); Smart Big Moves: The Story Behind Strategic Breakthroughs (FT Prentice Hall). He is the co-editor of IMD's guidebook on Mastering Executive Education: How to Combine Content with Context and Emotion (FT Prentice Hall)

Professor Strebel was IMD’s first Director of Research, held the Sandoz Family Foundation Chair in Strategic Change Management, sponsored the introduction of IMD’s Executive MBA program, directed several of IMD’s open and company-specific executive development programs, and developed the IMD online program, Strategic Thinking. 

Prior to joining IMEDE, one of the two founding institutes of IMD, he was Chairman of the Finance and Economics Group at the State University of New York in Binghamton, Director of the MBA Program at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, and on the financial staff of W.R. Grace & Co. 

He was educated at the University of Cape Town where he was awarded a Master of Science degree for a thesis in nuclear chemistry, graduated from Columbia University in New York with an MBA specializing in finance, and received his doctorate with a dissertation in chemical physics from Princeton University.

Francisco Szekely is Adjunct Professor of Leadership and Sustainability at IMD.

His work contributes to the understanding of the interrelationships between the emergence of new social, economic and environmental trends as well as the development of long-term, sustainable business strategies. His research explores how companies can include sustainability as a key element of their business strategy; the link between sustainability and business performance; high performance leadership; the development of the leadership required by organizations to sustain long-term business performance over time, as well as the development and expectations of generations “Y" and "Next."

Prior to joining IMD, Professor Szekely served on the faculties of Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government, MIT, the International Academy of the Environment in Geneva, Switzerland and the European School of Management and Technology in Berlin, Germany where he taught sustainable development and responsible leadership. Additionally, he has worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Company managing clients in Mexico, the US and Holland and has served as a Deputy Minister of Environment and Natural Resources for the Mexican government. Most recently, Professor Szekely was Professor of Business Sustainability and Director of the Center for Responsible Business and Sustainability at the School of Management of the University of Texas at Dallas.

He is the author of seven books, numerous articles and many case studies and is the recipient of the “2011 International Award on the Hot Topic Case Writing” from the European Case Clearing House (ECCH). His works have been published in the European Management Journal, Environmental Assessment Review (MIT), and other refereed journals.

Professor Szekely holds a Mechanical Engineering degree from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, an M.Sc in Engineering from Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, and an M.Sc in Technology & Human Affairs and a Ph.D in Environmental Sciences and Economics from Washington University, St. Louis, Missouri.

Named one of the top business school professors globally by Poets & Quants, which included her on its 'Best 40 under 40' list in 2021, Ina Toegel's work focuses on how to build and sustain high-performance teams. She started her career as an economist at the World Bank – an atypical background which means she adopts an interdisciplinary approach in her work. Meanwhile, her strong interest in the creative industries inspires her to incorporate interactive tools from the fields of film, sports, music, and the arts in her teaching.

Toegel says teams play a crucial role as vehicles for change in organizations seeking to make major transformations. Her approach when engaging with companies is to work with project teams or individual units in an agile way – looking at the individual make-up of the team, dynamics within the team, and how these relationships are embedded in the organizational context. Much of her work involves leading organizational change and aligning organizational culture with strategic priorities.

She is also keen on leveraging technology to enable executives to develop new ways of working, communicating, and collaborating. She uses virtual reality to explore how teams improve over time, and is investigating how AI can be used to recognize emotions – as well as its implications for an organization's business, how it structures its operations, and how it works with customers.

She has led and taught on customized leadership programs for a wide range of organizations, including Hilti, Pirelli, Tetra Pak, Beiersdorf, Société Générale, DNB, DENSO, Vontobel, Buehler, Legrand, UEFA, MANE, Siam Commercial Bank, Bank of Communications, Bayer, Electrolux, ASSA ABLOY, T-Systems, Carlsberg, JTI, Hydro, and Tenaris.

She also leads IMD's Teams Reimagined open program and the culture transformation stream of its MBA and EMBA courses.

Poets & Quants said her inclusion on its 'Best 40 under 40' list was a recognition of her structured and inspirational approach to working with team dynamics and organizational culture transformation. She received nearly 100 nominations for the honor, making her one of the most nominated professors in its history. Participants, alumni, and faculty colleagues who nominated her praised her energetic style and ability to get people thinking, with one describing her as "our Socrates".

She is also a member of the Academy of Management and of the Strategic Management Society, and she presents at the Organizational Development and Change division during the Academy of Management's Annual Meeting.

Prior to joining IMD in 2015, Toegel taught corporate strategy at the Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne. In her previous role at the World Bank, she was involved in projects on structuring public-private partnerships in the transport, energy, and waste sectors in southeast Europe.

Selected publications

Why every team needs a Ringo (I by IMD, 2021)

Secrecy in practice: How middle managers promote strategic initiatives behind the scenes (Organization Studies, 2021)

The role of inclusion in responsible global leadership (Routledge, 2020)

Pep (Guardiola) talks – tapping into collective emotions (IMD, 2020)

How to beat gender stereotypes: Learn, speak up and react (World Economic Forum, 2019)

Thrive as an LGBT+ executive or ally ([email protected], 2019) 

How to create a high-performance team: Top tips for better collaboration (HR Future, 2018)

How to create a high-performance team (Forbes, 2018)

Recognition

Named on Poets & Quants 'Best 40 under 40' list of the world’s leading business school professors (2021)

Education

BA (Economics)

Columbia University, New York

MSc (Management Research)

Saïd Business School, University of Oxford

PhD (Strategic Management)

INSEAD

Omar Toulan is Professor of Strategy and International Management and the Dean of the MBA program at IMD. Professor Toulan's areas of expertise include strategic management, international business, growth strategies, and managing the multinational. Among his areas of research are offshoring and outsourcing, global account management, emerging market multinationals, and the impact of the digital disruption on the retail sector. His research has appeared in a variety of academic and practitioner oriented journals including Strategic Management Journal, Journal of International Business Studies, California Management Review, Industrial and Corporate Change, Emerging Markets Review, and Journal of Latin American Studies.

Before joining IMD, Dr. Toulan spent 19 years at McGill University in Canada where he was a tenured professor and also served as Associate Dean Academic and Masters Programs of the business school, overseeing all faculty and leading the introduction and redesign of various masters programs. He has also spent time as a Visiting Professor at London Business School, INSEAD, Imperial College, Stockholm School of Economics, and Universidad Torcuato di Tella. He has been awarded various research and teaching grants, including a Teaching Chair from the Quebec Government. He has given executive seminars extensively not only in Europe and North America but also Latin America and Japan.

Prior to entering academia, Professor Toulan worked as a management consultant for McKinsey and Company in its New York office, as well as at its Global Institute in Washington, D.C. He has also worked as a researcher at the US President's Council of Economic Advisers.

Professor Toulan received his undergraduate degree in International Economics from the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and went on to complete his PhD in Strategy at the Sloan School of Management at MIT.

Peter Vogel is Professor of Family Business and Entrepreneurship and holder of the Debiopharm Chair for Family Philanthropy at IMD Business School in Lausanne. He is also the Director of IMD Global Family Business Center.

In his research, teaching and advisory work, Peter works with family- & non-family enterprises globally on organizational regeneration through intrapreneurship, talent development & succession, strategy, governance, change management, and investment opportunities. He has extensive experience in working with owners of large family-controlled enterprises as well as non-family leaders in family businesses.

Peter has published in peer-reviewed academic journals such as Entrepreneurship, Theory and Practice, has written a number of books and book chapters as well as scientific and practitioner-oriented reports. His work is frequently referenced by leading newspapers and other media outlets, such as Harvard Business Review, CNN, Huffington Post, Forbes, Financial Times, Techcrunch, amongst others. He is a regular conference speaker, including TEDxLausanne, the Global Economic Symposium, the Family Matters Forum, the Family Business Network Global Summit, the G20 Young Entrepreneurs’ Alliance Summit, the St. Gallen Symposium, among others.

Prior to joining IMD, Peter served as Director of Custom Programs and Business Development at the Executive School of University of St.Gallen, as Assistant Professor of Technology Entrepreneurship at the University of St.Gallen, as well as Managing Director of the Center for Entrepreneurship and the Swiss Startup Monitor Foundation.

Peter is the founder and non-executive Chairman of the Delta Venture Partners AG as well as an Associate Partner of the Cambridge Family Enterprise Group. He is part of the expert network of the World Economic Forum (WEF) and is an alumni of the Forum’s Global Shapers community. He is part of the Futurework Forum, a global think-tank focused on the future of the world of work.

Peter earned his Ph.D. in Entrepreneurship from the Management of Technology and Entrepreneurship Institute of the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, and an MSc and BSc in Engineering from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology as well as the Georgia Institute of Technology.