A native Bostonian, Jean Lipman-Blumen is a noted organizational sociologist and social psychologist. Her intellectual appetite first flourished at Wellesley where she received her BA and MA. For her PhD she studied at Harvard under such academic stars as Talcott Parsons and Florence Kluckhohn in the Department of Social Relations for Interdisciplinary Social Science Studies.

Her career is a compelling example of what it means to be a scholar for the public good. Not content to work solely in academia, Lipman-Blumen directed the Women’s Research Program at the National Institute of Education, served as a Special Advisor to the White House’s Domestic Policy staff under President Carter and was President of LBS International, Ltd. a management consulting and public policy firm. Her three best known books are all aimed at improving how we go about the business of leadership and have been widely recognized for their impact. The Connective Edge: Leading in an Interdependent World was nominated for a Pulitzer; Hot Groups: Seeding Them, Feeding Them, and Using Them to Ignite Your Organization won “Business Book of the Year” from the American Publishers’ Association; and The Allure of Toxic Leaders, was chosen by Fast Company Magazine as one of the ten best business books in 2004.

Currently, she is the Thornton F. Bradshaw Chair in Public Policy and Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at the Claremont Graduate University where she is also the co-founding director of the Institute for Advanced Leadership Studies. She has published extensively on leadership, crisis management, public policy, organizational behavior, and gender issues, her most recent book being the co-edited volume The Art of Followership: How Great Followers Create Great Leaders and Organizations. She continues her commitment to work for the public good as president of the Connective Leadership Institute, a leadership, management consulting, and public policy research firm.