Our Faculty
As an inter-faculty initiative at Harvard University, ALI is guided by a board of faculty members with diverse experience and knowledge, representing nearly all of Harvard’s schools and disciplines.
Faculty Chair
Brian L. Trelstad
Harvard Business School
Faculty Executive Committee
Monica C. Higgins
Harvard Graduate School of Education
James P. Honan
Harvard Graduate School of Education
Howard K. Koh, M.D.
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and
Harvard Kennedy School
Deval Patrick
Harvard Kennedy School
Meredith Rosenthal
Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Faculty Board
William P. Alford
Harvard Law School
Anne E. Becker
Harvard Medical School
Cornell William Brooks
Harvard Kennedy School
Frank Dobbin
Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Alan Jenkins
Harvard Law School
Jerold Kayden
Harvard Graduate School of Design
Eric Mazur
Harvard University
Charles M. Stang
Harvard Divinity School
Peter Tufano
Harvard Business School
ALI Advisory Board
Join(ed) Together For Impact
A select group of past ALI Fellows and Partners promotes engagement among prior ALI Cohorts—the ALI Coalition—and provides critical advice to our faculty leadership.
Haifa Al Kaylani (2017)
Tony Barash (2010)
Suzanne Bays (2019)
Tushara Canekeratne (2015)
David Carey (2019)
Jim Francesconi (2022)
Bernard Franklin (2022)
Randy Freer (2021)
Susan Gianinno (2014)
Gareth Glaser (2017)
Amitava Guharoy (2022)
Carl Johnson (2016)
Ken Lang (2023)
Susan Leal (2009)
Susan Lynch (2020)
Ann MacDougal (2013)
Joe Mandato (2012)
David McCue (2021)
Mary Jo Meisner (2017)
Linda Palay (2016)
Devorah Patt (2022)
Walter Piacsek (2019)
N.J Pierce (2022)
Art Reimers (2014)
Amanda Rischbieth (2017)
Rodney Slater (2010)
Mark Sterling (2014)
Ben Thompson (2018)
Cecilia Warner (2014)
Di Wilkins (2023)
ALI Faculty Chair
Brian L. Trelstad
Faculty Chair, Advanced Leadership Initiative and William Henry Bloomberg Senior Lecturer of Business Administration and Joseph L. Rice, III Faculty Fellow at Harvard Business School
Brian Trelstad is Faculty Chair of the Harvard Advanced Leadership Initiative and a Senior Lecturer at Harvard Business School in the General Management Unit, teaching an elective course on Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and a Short Immersive Program on Effective Strategic Philanthropy. His teaching and research focuses on innovators (and the funders who support them) who are looking to develop systemic solutions to our most pressing social and environmental problems.
He is also a partner and board member at Bridges Fund Management, a specialist sustainable and impact investor with $1B+ under management that invests in mission-driven businesses, real-estate projects, and outcome-based contracts in the United States and Europe. Prior to joining Bridges, Brian was the chief investment officer at Acumen, a pioneering impact investment fund that primarily focused on emerging markets.
Brian is an alumnus of Harvard College, where he received a degree in Social Studies (AB 1991). He also received an MBA from the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and an MA in City and Regional Planning from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute.
Executive Committee
Monica C. Higgins
Kathleen McCartney Professor of Education Leadership, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Monica Higgins joined the Harvard faculty in 1995 and is the Kathleen McCartney Professor of Education Leadership at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) where her research and teaching focus on the areas of leadership development and organizational change. Prior to joining HGSE, she spent eleven years as a member of the faculty at Harvard Business School in the Organizational Behavior Unit. Her book, Career Imprints: Creating Leaders Across an Industry, (2005) focuses on the leadership development of executives in the biotechnology industry. In education, she studies the effectiveness of senior leadership teams in large urban school districts across the United States and the conditions that enhance organizational learning in public school systems. As a long-time member of the Public Education Leadership Project, a joint initiative between HBS and HGSE, Higgins co-authored a book with her colleagues on managing central office-school relationships called, Achieving Coherence in District Improvement; this book is based upon their work with large urban districts over a ten-year time period.
James P. Honan
Senior Lecturer on Education, Harvard Graduate School of Education
James P. Honan has served on the faculty at the Harvard Graduate School of Education (HGSE) since 1991. He is also a faculty member at the Harvard Kennedy School and a principal of the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. He is Educational Co-Chair of the Institute for Educational Management (IEM) and has also been a faculty member in a number of Harvard's other executive education programs and professional development institutes for educational leaders and nonprofit administrators.
Howard K. Koh, M.D.
Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership, Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and Harvard Kennedy School
Dr. Howard K. Koh is the Harvey V. Fineberg Professor of the Practice of Public Health Leadership at the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and the Harvard Kennedy School. In these roles, he advances leadership education and training at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as well as with the Harvard Kennedy School, the Harvard Business School and across Harvard University.
From 2009-2014, Dr. Koh served as the 14th Assistant Secretary for Health for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), after being nominated by President Barack Obama and being confirmed by the U.S. Senate.
Deval Patrick
Co-Director, Center for Public Leadership,
Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership, Harvard Kennedy School
Deval Patrick is a professor of practice and co-director of the Center for Public Leadership at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School. After law school, he clerked for a federal appellate judge and then launched a career as an attorney and business executive, becoming a staff attorney at the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights in the Clinton administration, a partner at two Boston law firms, and a senior executive at two Fortune 50 companies.
From 2006 to 2015, he served as the governor of Massachusetts, the first Black person to serve in the role. During his two terms, Patrick focused on health care, public schools and public infrastructure, and launched initiatives stimulating clean energy and biotechnology. Patrick remains involved in progressive politics, mainly by supporting local grassroots groups working to build engagement among disenfranchised and marginalized voters.
Meredith B. Rosenthal
C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
Dr. Meredith Rosenthal is the C. Boyden Gray Professor of Health Economics at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. She received her B.A in International Relations (Commerce) from Brown University in 1990 and her Ph.D. in Health Policy (Economics track) from Harvard University in 1998.
Her research focuses primarily on policies that will help slow the growth in healthcare spending and improve value. These efforts include changes in payment incentives, benefit design, and the provision of information and behavioral “nudges” to both patients and providers. Her research has influenced the design of provider payment systems in both the public and private sectors. She has advised federal and state policymakers in healthcare payment policy and implementation. She has also testified in Congressional hearings on direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs and pay-for-performance and in legislative hearings in California and Massachusetts concerning healthcare provider payment and benefit design policies.
Dr. Rosenthal previously served as ALI’s Faculty chair from 2019-2023.
Faculty Board
William P. Alford
Jerome A. and Joan L. Cohen Professor of Law,
Harvard Law School
William P. Alford is a scholar of Chinese law and legal history. His books include To Steal a Book is an Elegant Offense: Intellectual Property Law in Chinese Civilization (Stanford University Press 1995), Raising the Bar: The Emerging Legal Profession in East Asia (Harvard East Asian Legal Studies 2007), 残疾人法律保障机制研究 (A Study of Legal Mechanisms to Protect Persons with Disabilities) (Huaxia Press 2008, with Wang Liming and Ma Yu’er), Prospects for the Professions in China (Routledge 2011, with William Kirby and Kenneth Winston) and Taiwan and International Human Rights: A Story of Transformation (forthcoming Springer 2018, with Jerome Cohen and Lo Chang-fa).
Professor Alford is the founding Chair of the Harvard Law School Project on Disability which provides pro bono services on issues of disability in China, Bangladesh, the Philippines, Vietnam and several other nations.
Anne E. Becker
Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Anne E. Becker, MD, PhD, SM is the Maude and Lillian Presley Professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at Harvard Medical School she also serves as a member of the Leadership Council of the Harvard/MIT MD-PhD Program. An anthropologist and psychiatrist, Dr. Becker has been lead investigator on a series of studies demonstrating the relationship between media exposure and eating pathology in the small-scale indigenous population of Fiji.
In addition, Dr. Becker's NIMH-funded research has investigated the impact of rapid economic and social transition on eating pathology, suicide, and other youth health risk behaviors in Fiji. She and her co-PI, Pere Eddy Eustache, have just completed a school-based youth mental health pilot intervention in central Haiti with NIMH funding.
Cornell William Brooks
Hauser Professor of the Practice of Nonprofit Organizations and Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice, Harvard Kennedy School
Cornell William Brooks is Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership and Social Justice at the Harvard Kennedy School. He is also Director of The William Monroe Trotter Collaborative for Social Justice at the School’s Center for Public Leadership, and Visiting Professor of the Practice of Prophetic Religion and Public Leadership at Harvard Divinity School. Brooks is the former president and CEO of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), a civil rights attorney, and an ordained minister.
Brooks was most recently visiting professor of social ethics, law, and justice movements at Boston University’s School of Law and School of Theology. He was a visiting fellow and director of the Campaign and Advocacy Program at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics in 2017. Brooks served as the 18th president of the NAACP from 2014 to 2017.
Frank Dobbin
Henry Ford II Professor of the Social Sciences
,
Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Frank Dobbin received his B.A. from Oberlin College in 1980 and his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1987. Dobbin studies organizations, inequality, economic behavior, and public policy. His Inventing Equal Opportunity (Princeton 2009) shows how corporate personnel managers defined what it meant to discriminate.
With Alexandra Kalev, he is developing an evidence-based approach to diversity management. Innovations that make managers part of the solution, such as mentoring programs, diversity taskforces, and special recruitment programs, have helped to promote diversity in firms, while programs signaling that managers are part of the problem, such as diversity training and diversity performance evaluations, have not.
Alan Jenkins
Professor of Practice, Harvard Law School
Alan Jenkins is a Professor of Practice at Harvard Law School where he teaches courses on Race and the Law, Communication, and Supreme Court Jurisprudence. Before joining the Law School faculty, he was President and Co-Founder of The Opportunity Agenda, a social justice communication lab.
Jenkins’s prior positions have included Assistant to the Solicitor General at the U.S. Department of Justice, where he represented the United States government in constitutional and other litigation before the U.S. Supreme Court; Director of Human Rights at the Ford Foundation, where he managed grantmaking in the United States and eleven overseas regions; and Associate Counsel to the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, where he defended the rights of low-income communities facing exploitation and discrimination. He previously served as a Law Clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and to U.S. District Court Judge Robert L. Carter.
Jerold Kayden
Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Jerold S. Kayden is the Frank Backus Williams Professor of Urban Planning and Design at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design, where he previously served as co-chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design and director of the Urban Planning Program. His teaching and scholarship address issues of land use and environmental law, public and private development in cities, public space, urban disasters and climate change, and design competitions.
He leads Advocates for Privately Owned Public Space, a non-profit organization he founded based in New York City. From 2009 to 2011, he was Principal Investigator for the Harvard-Netherlands Project on Climate Change, Water, Land Development, and Adaptation, a collaborative project between Harvard, the Dutch Government, and the Deltares Institute.
Eric Mazur
Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Chair of Applied Physics, Harvard University
Eric Mazur is the Balkanski Professor of Physics and Applied Physics and Area Chair of Applied Physics at Harvard University, Member of the Faculty of Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, and Past President of the Optical Society.
Mazur is a prominent physicist known for his contributions in nanophotonics, an internationally recognized educational innovator, and a sought after speaker. In education he is widely known for his work on Peer Instruction, an interactive teaching method aimed at engaging students in the classroom and beyond. In 2014 Mazur became the inaugural recipient of the Minerva Prize for Advancements in Higher Education.
Charles M. Stang
Professor of Early Christian Thought and Director of the Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard Divinity School
Charles Stang joined the Faculty of Divinity in 2008. His research and teaching focus on the history and theology of Christianity in late antiquity, especially Eastern varieties of Christianity. More specifically, he is interested in the development of asceticism, monasticism, and mysticism in Eastern Christianity.
His most recent book, Our Divine Double, was published in 2016 by Harvard University Press. His earlier book, Apophasis and Pseudonymity in Dionysius the Areopagite: "No Longer I" (Oxford University Press, 2012), won the Manfred Lautenschläger Award for Theological Promise in 2013.
Peter Tufano
Baker Foundation Professor, Harvard Business School; Senior Advisor, Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability
Peter Tufano is Baker Foundation Professor at Harvard Business School and Senior Advisor to the newly created Harvard Salata Institute for Climate and Sustainability. From 2011 to 2021, he served as the Peter Moores Dean at Said Business School at the University of Oxford. From 1989 to 2011, he was a Professor at HBS, where he oversaw the school’s tenure and promotion processes, campus planning, and university relations and was the founding co-chair of the Harvard i-lab.
Tufano’s research and course development has spanned financial innovation, financial engineering, and household finance. His current work focuses on business solutions to climate change. With Professors Toffel and Serafeim, he is launching the D^3 Climate and Sustainability Impact Lab studying how new technologies such as AI can be used to address climate issues.