2011 Faculty Pioneers

Lynn Sharp Paine is the John G. McLean Professor and Senior Associate Dean, Director of Faculty Development, at Harvard Business School. Former chair of the General Management unit and co-founder of the required course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability, she has taught courses on general management, cross-cultural management, and business ethics in a variety of MBA and executive programs. She currently co-chairs the School’s Senior Executive Program for China. 

Lynn has written widely on the leadership and governance of companies that meld high ethical standards with outstanding financial results. Her books include Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance and Leadership, Ethics, and Organizational Integrity. Her new book Capitalism at Risk:  Rethinking the Role of Business, with HBS colleagues Joe Bower and Dutch Leonard, is due out from Harvard Business Review Press in October.

Advisor to companies and industry groups, she served on the Conference Board’s Blue Ribbon Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise after Enron’s collapse and the Conference Board’s Task Force on Executive Compensation following the financial crisis of 2008. She is currently a member of the Governing Board of the Center for Audit Quality, an adviser to the Hills Program on Governance at CSIS, and an adviser to the Conference Board’s Governance Center.  She was a director of RiskMetrics Group until June 2010, when the company became part of MSCI Inc.

A summa cum laude graduate of Smith College, Lynn has a doctorate in moral philosophy from Oxford University and a law degree from Harvard Law School. She practiced law with the Boston firm of Hill & Barlow early in her career.