David Ager

David Ager is a Senior Lecturer in Executive Education.  He engages CEOs, CHROs, and their teams to design and deliver customized executive development experiences for executive, senior and high potential leaders.  The companies hail from diverse sectors including energy, fast moving consumer goods, quick service food, finance, government, media, automotive, retail, gems and jewelry, spirits and luxury goods.  His teaching addresses a broad set of topics within leadership development and organizational behavior.

David chairs Harvard Business School’s first two executive development programs intended for Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal and Indigenous Leaders. The first of these programs, Leading People and Investing to Build Sustainable Communities, was launched in 2017.  David worked closely with AFOA, NAFOA, NCAI, and HUNAP to design this program, which is intended to explore how governance practices can shape the management of investments (e.g. sovereign wealth funds) with a longer-term view toward building sustainable communities.  The second program focuses on leading high performing Aboriginal Financial Institutions.  These organizations provide capital to finance Aboriginal small and medium-sized enterprises with the goal to increase social and economic self-reliance and sustainability for Indigenous people. 

David also co-chaired Families in Business and Family Office Wealth Management, two Harvard Business School executive education programs focused on Governance of the Family Enterprise.

From 2004 to 2012 David served as a faculty member and the director of undergraduate studies in the Sociology Department at Harvard University.  One of the first faculty to introduce the case method of learning to Harvard College, David offered courses on leadership, organizational sociology, and field research methods.  In 2008 he introduced the first undergraduate course on Social Entrepreneurship at Harvard College with an emphasis on using entrepreneurial approaches to create for-profit, not-for-profit, and hybrid ventures to address social problems and bring about social change.  Before coming to Harvard, David was a research associate and Director of Program Mexico at the Ivey Business School in Canada, where he conducted research and wrote cases on companies from Canada, the United States and México doing business in México.  David began his career as a civil servant in the Canadian Federal Government where he served as the Chief of Administration to the Minister in the Fisheries and Oceans and later the Employment and Immigration Departments.

In 2004 David earned a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, a joint degree granted by Harvard Business School and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.   He also earned an Honors B.Sc. in Economics and Human Biology from the University of Toronto, an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario and a Master's degree in Sociology from Harvard University.  In 2010 Harvard University awarded David the Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for excellence in teaching and dedication to undergraduate education.  In 2011 he was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for excellence in teaching at Harvard University by the Alpha-Iota of Massachusetts Phi Beta Kappa chapter.  David’s ongoing research interests include leading through change, especially in the context of Mergers and Acquisitions, Belongingness, and Resilience.