Teaching & Cases
I teach leaders to see how organizational systems shape opportunity, mobility, and inequality at work. At Harvard Business School, I teach Leadership and Organizational Behavior in the MBA required curriculum and develop case materials on mentorship, mobility, recruitment, talent development, and managing across difference.
My teaching draws on my research as an organizational ethnographer. I use field-based cases and research-informed frameworks to help students examine the gap between organizational ideals and organizational practice — and to understand how leaders can build systems that work better in practice.
My teaching begins from a simple premise: leaders shape organizations through the systems they design and the everyday practices they reinforce.
In the classroom, I ask students to consider how race, class, and gender become meaningful in organizational life — not only through formal policies, but through relationships, routines, expectations, and interpretations.
I use the case method to help students move from abstract commitments to practical judgment. The goal of my teaching is not to give students a script. It is to help them develop the analytical discipline to diagnose organizational systems, understand human behavior in context, and lead with greater clarity.
Leadership and Organizational Behavior
I teach Leadership and Organizational Behavior in the MBA required curriculum at Harvard Business School. The course introduces students to core questions about motivation, decision-making, power, culture, teams, leadership, and organizational design.
My teaching in LEAD focuses especially on how leaders build, interpret, and change human capital systems — and how those systems shape opportunity, advancement, and organizational outcomes.
My teaching in LEAD focuses especially on how leaders build, interpret, and change human capital systems — and how those systems shape opportunity, advancement, and organizational outcomes.
Cases & Course Materials
Harvard Business School CaseMentorship & Mobility at Walmart
How do large organizations develop and retain talent at scale? This case examines mentorship, mobility, and talent development in one of the world’s largest employers. It asks students to consider how organizational systems shape career progression and what leaders can do to support advancement across a large and complex workforce.
Teaching themes: mentorship, career mobility, talent development, human capital systems, frontline work, organizational scale
Teaching Themes
Human Capital Systems
How do organizations recruit, develop, promote, and retain people? And how are new tools changing these human capital systems? I teach students to analyze the systems that shape career outcomes and to understand how those systems operate in practice.
Managing Across Difference
How should leaders navigate race, class, gender, and culture at work? I help students examine how difference becomes meaningful in organizational life and how context shapes effective leadership.
Diversity Initiatives in Practice
Why do well-intentioned inclusion efforts sometimes stall or backfire? My teaching helps leaders examine the implementation challenges that emerge when organizational ideals meet organizational practice.
Executive Education & Practitioner Audiences
I also teach executives and practitioner audiences on leadership, human capital, career mobility, diversity initiatives, and managing across difference.
My executive teaching draws on field-based research to help leaders diagnose organizational systems and understand why well-intentioned practices can produce unexpected outcomes. I work with leaders to examine how policies are interpreted, how systems are enacted, and how organizational context shapes whether change efforts take hold.