Joseph Fuller is a Professor of Management Practice in General Management and Entrepreneurship. He founded and co-leads the school’s project, Managing the Future of Work, as well as the Harvard Project on the Workforce. He currently leads the FIELD Global Capstone course in the first year of the MBA program. FIELD Global Capstone is the school’s premier experiential learning course, in which more than 900 first year MBA students travel to fifteen countries around the world to work directly local companies on a product or service challenge. He formerly developed the Making Difficult Decisions course in the second year of the MBA program and headed required The Entrepreneurial Manager course.
Joe’s research probes the major forces shaping the future of work. He has written extensively on the "skills gap" and investigates the paradox that many employers have chronic difficulty filling jobs while millions of Americans remain unemployed, underemployed, or have left the workforce. His research on degree inflation—a phenomenon whereby companies impose a requirement that candidates hold a college degree to apply for positions that have not historically required post-secondary credentials—has been cited as a catalyst for the emergence of the skills-based hiring movement. Joe has written extensively on upward mobility for lower wage workers, including research on the effectiveness of community colleges and the opportunity to expand apprenticeships in the United States. He is a co-creator of the American Opportunity Index that ranks leading companies on the quality of the opportunities for upward mobility they provide workers without college degrees. His research on how employers’ policies shape the prospects of low wage workers achieving upward mobility, served as the basis for his article The High Cost of Neglecting Low Wage Workers that won the 2023 Warren Bennis Prize as the best article on leadership in the Harvard Business Review. He has published pioneering research on the business impact of employees’ caregiving obligations on employers.
In 2021, Joe co-founded the Harvard Project on Workforce with colleagues from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and Harvard Graduate School of Education. The project focuses on issues related to upward mobility and takes a multi-disciplinary approach to understanding issues ranging from career navigation to skills acquisition. The project also sponsors a study group for students from across Harvard’s graduate schools.
A 1981 graduate of the school, Joe was a founder and first employee of the global consulting firm, Monitor Group, now Monitor-Deloitte. He served as the Chief Executive Officer of its consulting operations until 2006 and remained a Senior Advisor to the firm until its acquisition by Deloitte in 2012. During his three decades in consulting, Fuller worked with senior executives and policymakers on a wide variety of issues related to corporate strategy and national competitiveness.
Joe has spoken at numerous management conferences and has written extensively. His work has appeared in Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, CEO, and The Journal of Applied Corporate Finance magazines, as well as The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, The Washington Post, Politico, The Atlantic, The Hill, Axios, The International Herald Tribune, China Daily, India’s Business Standard, and Brazil’s EXAME. His research has been covered in the Wall Street Journal, the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Economist. He has appeared on CNBC, NPR’s Morning Edition and On Point, PBS’s Marketplace and NBC’s Nightly News with Lester Holt, CBS’s Evening News with Nora O’Donnell and France 24’s Evening Report. His white papers, Just Say No To Wall Street and What’s a Director to Do?, written in collaboration with the late Professor Michael Jensen are used in the curriculums of dozens of MBA programs worldwide.
Mr. Fuller is a magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College and a member of the Executive Committee of the Harvard College Fund, as well as a former member of Harvard Business School’s Board of Dean’s Advisors, and the boards of directors of PVH Corporation, Merrimac Industries and SM&A. He serves on the boards of Aera Technology and Helios Consulting. He is the Chairman of the Board of Trustees of Western Governors University. Joe is a Senior Visiting Fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a Senior Fellow at the Burning Glass Institute.
