Reviews Write New Review
Location
Booking Fee
Fee: $##,###Get Pricing
Virtual Fee: $##,###Get Pricing
[email protected]
Debora Spar
NYT Bestselling Author & Senior Associate Dean of Business & Global Society, Harvard Business School
Debora L. Spar is a leading expert on how technology shapes business, political and societal structures, gender roles, and society. She currently serves as the Senior Associate Dean of Harvard Business School. Prior to this position, she was the Spangler Family Professor of Business Administration and had served as senior associate dean for faculty research and development at Harvard Business School. She taught courses on the politics of international business, comparative capitalism, and economic development.
Prior to Harvard, Spar served as the seventh president of Barnard College from 2008 to 2017. During her tenure, Spar was a vocal proponent of women's education and leadership, spearheading initiatives that include the Athena Center for Leadership Studies, an interdisciplinary center devoted to the theory and practice of women's leadership, and Barnard's Global Symposium series, an annual gathering of high-profile and accomplished female leaders held each year in a different region of the world.
Apart from her role at Barnard College, Spar took on the role of an academic dean at Columbia University. She was also the 10th president of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts from 2017 to 2018. Her leadership positions extend to the corporate world, where she served as a member of the Board of Directors of the American investment bank Goldman Sachs from 2011 to 2017.
Spar's scholarly research focuses on issues of international political economy, examining how rules are established in new or emerging markets and how firms and governments together shape the evolving global economy. She has penned several insightful books on these topics, including "Ruling the Waves: Cycles of Invention, Chaos, and Wealth from the Compass to the Internet" (2001), "The Baby Business: How Money, Science, and Politics Drive the Commerce of Conception" (2006) and "Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection" (2013). Her work has been recognized in various mediums, and she has appeared on shows such as "60 Minutes," "The News Hour with Jim Lehrer," and "ABC World News Tonight."
Spar is a graduate of Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service and received her doctorate in government from Harvard. She is a member of the Academy of Arts and Sciences and has served as a trustee of the Nightingale-Bamford School. She is married to Miltos Catomeris, an architect whose specialty is academic, institutional, and corporate campuses, and they are the parents of three children.
Videos
Speech Topics
Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection
As one of the youngest female professors to be tenured at Harvard Business School and a mother of three, Debora Spar swore to young women that they could have it all. “We thought we could just glide into the new era of equality, with babies, board seats, and husbands in tow,” she says. “We were wrong.” In this highly entertaining and inspiring talk, Spar explores how American women’s lives have—and have not—changed over the past fifty years. Armed with reams of new research, she details how women struggled for power and instead got stuck in an endless quest for perfection. The challenges confronting women are more complex than ever, she says, and they are challenges that come inherently and inevitably from being female. Both deeply personal and statistically rich, Spar shares her story and the story of our culture, and provides a road map for the future.
Related Speakers View all
Carly Fiorina
Former CEO of HP, Chair of Colonial Williamsburg Fou...
|
|
Rebecca Walker
Feminist Author, Social Justice Advocate, Film & TV ...
|
|
Valerie Szczepanik
Head of the Strategic Hub for Innovation and Financi...
|
|
Shiza Shahid
Entrepreneur, Technologist, Investor, Impact Leader ...
|
|
Jacqueline Novogratz
Founder & CEO of Acumen Fund
|
|
Julianne Malveaux
Economist, Author & Political Commentator; President...
|
|
Wendy Kopp
CEO of Teach For All & Founder of Teach For America...
|
|
Carla Hills
Chairman Emeritus; Chairman and CEO, Hills & Company...
|
|
Lynne Biggar
Senior Advisor at Boston Consulting Group; Former Ch...
|
|
Shirin Behzadi
Board Director & Advisor; Brain Cancer Survivor
|
|
Kathryn Edin
Director of the Center for Research on Child Wellbei...
|
|
Jane Fraser
President at Citigroup & CEO, Global Consumer Bankin...
|
|
Megan Quinn
General Partner at Spark Capital
|
|
Kristie Kennedy
Women's Worth & Wellness Expert, TEDx Audacious Lead...
|
|
Sabine Heller
CEO of invitation only social community ASMALLWORLD...
|
|
Kristina Salen
CFO of WWE; Former CFO at Etsy; Fashion Industry & B...
|
|
Polly LaBarre
Founding Member of the Fast Company Magazine, Co-Fou...
|
|
Rashmi Sinha
Businesswoman, Former CEO of SlideShare
|
|
Cynthia Montgomery
Timken Professor at Harvard, Strategy Expert, Author
|
|
Lynda Weinman
Co-founder, Lynda.com
|