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Frances Frei  

Professor of Technology & Operations Management at Harvard Business School

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.

Speech Topics

Building (and Rebuilding) Trust

Trust is the foundation for everything we do, says Harvard Business School’s Frances Frei. “If we can learn to trust one another more, we can have unprecedented human progress,” she says.But what do we do when trust is broken? At companies, there are many reasons why the foundation of trust ruptures – a data breach, a CEO caught publicly disparaging an employee, a culture of bias and discrimination, and even a technological error that costs a human life. All of these things were happening at Uber, when Frei was brought on to its leadership team to help. In her talk on the art of building (and rebuilding) trust, Frei gives audiences a positive and practical breakdown of the steps companies and leaders need to take in order to be successful – using her time at the ride-hailing company as a critical example.But, before you can solve the problem of broken trust, Frei says, you must first understand how trust works and which components you need to work on – be it logic, empathy, or authenticity.

Increasing Influence

Frances Frei believes everyone has a superpower that can be used for good.That is, when it’s harnessed correctly.In Frei’s work with numerous organizations, covering various industries, one very clear pattern has emerged. Change makers, organization builders, and corporate fire starters are unintentionally limiting themselves in their efforts to become exceptional leaders. As a result, companies aren’t getting the best from their people.Frei wants top-level executives – and their teams – to stop holding themselves back. Leaders too many times try to go it alone. But, leadership is a team sport, says Frei. To have real and lasting influence, you need to work tirelessly to create the conditions for everyone to thrive.Frei shares with audiences her high-impact guidance for how best to lead – not just manage – in order to help others unlock the greatness in themselves.

Uncommon Service

The primary driver of our economy is no longer what we make, but how we serve each other, says Frances Frei. But, most companies treat service as a low-priority business operation, keeping it out of the spotlight until a customer complains. In her book, Uncommon Service: How to Win by Putting Customers at the Core of Your Business, Frei argues that – despite the fact that we are all born with an innate desire to help each other – it’s not enough for companies to simply demand service excellence from employees.Service needs to be tightly weaved into corporate culture, organizational design, and every core decision that’s made.With audiences, Frei makes a powerful case for rethinking the organizational approach to the service – using it as a competitive weapon, instead of a damage-control function, to ultimately increase profitability, satisfaction, and strategic differentiation.

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