Sandra J. Sucher

SANDRA J. SUCHER joined the Technology and Operations Management Unit faculty of Harvard Business School after 25 years in industry and nonprofit management. Presently, she leads and teaches the required MBA course, “Leadership and Corporate Accountability” and also leads and teaches "The Moral Leader" – an elective in the MBA curriculum. She has taught "Technology and Operations Management" and related courses in various Executive Education programs. Her current research focuses on layoffs and the management of labor mobility, leadership and character development, moral leadership, learning through literature, and the management of differences. Professor Sucher has published two books on the Moral Leader course: an instructor’s guide, Teaching The Moral Leader: A Literature-Based Leadership Course (Routledge 2007), and a student textbook, The Moral Leader: Challenges, Tools, and Insights (Routledge 2008).

From 1986 until 1998, Sucher worked at Fidelity Investments. As Vice President of Corporate Quality, she focused the firm's division-level quality groups on customer loyalty research. As Vice President of Retail Service Quality, she set service strategy for the retail business and improved service and operations processes, introducing process management as a framework for cross-functional improvement. As Vice President of Human Resources for Fidelity's Service Company, she introduced statistical process control to improve the quality of operations performance in Fidelity's retail back office.

Prior to Fidelity, Sucher spent 10 years in fashion retailing at Filene's, a Boston-based department store chain. She wrote the proposal, approved by Federated Department Stores, to expand Filene's Basement from a single store to a national chain. She led a reorganization of the business, creating a separate career path for store management executives. In her last assignment, as Vice President of Customer Service, she improved customer service for Filene's then 14-unit regional business.

Sucher began her career as a Director of Education and Research for The Sanctuary, Inc., a non-profit drop-in drug treatment, education, and research facility.

Sucher's Board assignments include: Board of Governors - Harvard Business School Association of Boston (2000 - 2005); Director of Port Financial (2000 - 2003); Chairman of the Better Business Bureau (1994-1996); Director of The Eliot Bank (1986 -1990); Radcliffe Management Seminars Program Advisory Board (1980 - 2000); and Director of the National Coordinating Council on Drug Education (1972-74).

Sucher received her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1976 with first- and second-year honors; she also earned a Masters of Arts in Teaching from the Harvard Graduate School of Education and a BA from the University of Michigan. Sucher is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.