Tsedal Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration and the John B. Hess Senior Associate Dean and Chair of the MBA programme at Harvard Business School. She is also the founding chair of the HBS AI Academy. Her research examines digital transformation, global collaboration and how organisations scale cultural change.
Neeley received her doctorate in management science and engineering from Stanford University, specialising in work, technology and organisations. Before her academic career, she spent a decade in business roles at organisations including Lucent Technologies and The Forum Corporation. Her work covered customer experience, performance systems, sales development and telecommunications infrastructure.
Her book The Language of Global Success follows the transformation of a globalising company through a shared language. It examines the organisational and human implications beyond the apparently straightforward instruction to communicate in the same way. Remote Work Revolution considers the conditions required for effective remote and hybrid work, including trust, communication, coordination and inclusion.
With Paul Leonardi, she wrote The Digital Mindset: What It Really Takes to Thrive in the Age of Data, Algorithms, and AI. The book connects technological literacy with attitudes and behaviours that enable people to recognise and act on new possibilities. Her teaching and research also address the organisational structures required for AI-driven transformation, extending the discussion beyond technical training or isolated experiments.
For executive audiences, Neeley is particularly relevant when a technology or global-growth agenda needs to become a people-and-organisation conversation. A useful brief might concern a distributed team, the capability needed to participate in digital change or how leaders align an operating model with their ambitions. Her perspective asks whether people can collaborate and exercise informed judgement within the new environment, rather than assuming that a common platform, language or policy will make the transformation work.
