Frances Frei

Frances Frei is a Professor of Technology and Operations Management at Harvard Business School. Her research investigates how leaders create the conditions for organizations and individuals to thrive by designing for excellence in strategy, operations and culture. She regularly advises senior executives embarking on large-scale change initiatives and organizational transformation, including embracing diversity and inclusion as a lever for significantly improving performance. In September 2018, she was hired as a senior adviser to Riot Games to help implement their "Culture and Diversity & Inclusion Initiative."

A global thought leader in leadership and strategy, Frei is widely recognized for her dynamic teaching style and breakthrough courses optimized for rapid, lasting impact. She developed one of the most popular classes at HBS, which explores business models that reliably delight customers. She also led the design and launch of HBS’s innovative FIELD curriculum built around learning experiences that are experiential and immersive. Besides enriching the academic world, Frei has also taken on active roles in the corporate world. She served as Uber's first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy and also holds a position on the board of directors at WeWork, being the first woman to do so.

In 2017, Frei was tapped to be Uber's first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy with a mandate to help the company navigate its very public crisis in leadership and culture. In her ongoing work with Uber, she has focused on giving thousands of employees the tools to excel in a context of hyper-growth, strategic change, and an evolution in cultural values. Further extending her influence, in April 2023, she launched a podcast called "Fixable" with her wife, Anne Morriss, to share their insights on various topics.

Her firsthand experience in Silicon Valley gave her a new lens on the urgent topic of trust, and in May 2018, Frei delivered a widely-viewed TED talk on "How to build (and rebuild) trust." This powerful framework delivers a crash course on stakeholder trust: how to build it, maintain it and restore it when lost.

Frei is now helping to launch The Leadership Consortium (TLC), a first-of-its kind leadership accelerator that works to build inclusive executive teams and elevate diverse leaders to senior levels of the world’s most influential organizations. Through a curated blend of participant development and direct company engagement, TLC enables strategic investment in high-value, diverse talent and fosters discontinuous leaps in individual and company performance.

Frei is the best-selling author of not only "Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business," but also "Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You." She holds a Ph.D. in Operations and Information Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, a master's degree in industrial engineering from Pennsylvania State University, and a bachelor's degree in mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania.