Christina Wallace teaches Launching Tech Ventures in the second-year MBA program and is co-course head for The Entrepreneurial Manager in the first-year MBA program. She also leads the MBA Startup Bootcamp immersion program and guest teaches in several executive education programs. Previously, she taught the Entrepreneurial Marketing course.
Christina M. Wallace
Senior Lecturer of Business Administration
Senior Lecturer of Business Administration
Entrepreneurial Management
A self-described “human Venn diagram” Christina Wallace has crafted a career at the intersection of business, technology, and the arts. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Entrepreneurial Management Unit at Harvard Business School where she is co-course head for The Entrepreneurial Manager, teaches Launching Tech Ventures, and leads the MBA Startup Bootcamp immersion program. Her latest book, The Portfolio Life, was published by Hachette in 2023.
Previously, Christina was vice president of growth at Bionic, an innovation consulting firm that builds startups inside large enterprises. Prior to joining Bionic, Christina founded BridgeUp: STEM, an edtech startup inside the American Museum of Natural History, was the founding director of Startup Institute New York, and the co-founder and CEO of venture-backed fashion company Quincy Apparel. She was also, very briefly, a management consultant with the Boston Consulting Group and began her career at the Metropolitan Opera.
Christina holds undergraduate degrees in mathematics and theater studies from Emory University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She is an active angel investor in early-stage tech startups as well as commercial theater productions on Broadway. She regularly speaks, writes, and consults on a wide range of topics, ranging from failure and resilience to corporate innovation, from K12 computer science education to her viral TED talk detailing her successful approach to hacking online dating. Mashable called her one of “44 Female Founders to Know” and Refinery29 named her one of the "Most Powerful Women in NYC Tech." She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Times, Forbes, Inc, Fast Company, Quartz, Elle, and Marie Claire among others.
Christina is the co-author of New To Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth (April 2019, Penguin Random House). She also hosted The Limit Does Not Exist, an iHeartRadio podcast about portfolio careers that published 125 episodes over three seasons, garnering over 2 million downloads.
- Featured Work
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What Color Is Your Parachute? meets Out of Office in this inspiring, practical playbook to achieve sustainable work-life balance while optimizing your happiness, personal growth, and bank accounts.
Pouring yourself into a single full-time job is the riskiest move you can make. Your parents’ advice to focus on one career path? It doesn’t work anymore, for reasons ranging from recessions to student loan debt, the gig economy, climate disasters, and a global pandemic (to name a few). We need a dramatically different relationship with work, one that allows us to define ourselves beyond our paid labor.
The answer? A Portfolio Life. An anti-hustle, pro-rest approach to work-life balance, a Portfolio Life is built on three tenets:- You are more than any one role or opportunity.
- Diversification will help you navigate change and mitigate uncertainty.
- When (not if) your needs change, you can and should rebalance.
In The Portfolio Life, Harvard professor, serial entrepreneur, and self-described "human Venn diagram" Christina Wallace adapts tried-and-true practices from the business sector to help you eschew the cult of ambition and experience the freedom of building the flexible, fulfilling, and sustainable life you want. Drawing on research, case studies, and her own experience, she walks you step-by-step through the process of designing a strategy for the long haul. Because you deserve rest, relationships, and a rewarding career—not someday, but today. After all, you only live once.
Serial entrepreneurs David Kidder and Christina Wallace reveal their revolutionary playbook for igniting growth inside established companies.
Most established companies face a key survival challenge, says David Kidder, CEO of Bionic, lifelong entrepreneur, and angel investor in more than thirty startups: operational efficiency and outdated bureaucracy are at war with new growth. Legacy companies are skilled at growing big businesses into even bigger ones. But they are less adept at discovering new opportunities and turning them into big businesses, the way entrepreneurs and early-stage investors must. In New to Big, Kidder and Wallace reveal their proprietary blueprint for installing a permanent growth capability inside any company--the Growth Operating System.
The Growth OS borrows the best tools, systems, and mind-sets from entrepreneurship and venture capital and adapts them for established organizations, leveraging these two distinct skills as a form of management for building in a future that is uncertain. By focusing on what consumers do rather than what they say, celebrating productive failure, embracing a portfolio approach, and learning from the outside-in, Kidder and Wallace argue any company can go on offense and win the future.
This isn't about a one-off innovation moonshot. It's about building a permanent ladder to the moon.
- Books
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- Wallace, Christina. The Portfolio Life: How to Future-Proof Your Career, Avoid Burnout, and Build a Life Bigger than Your Business Card. Balance, 2023. View Details
- Kidder, David, and Christina Wallace. New To Big: How Companies Can Create Like Entrepreneurs, Invest Like VCs, and Install a Permanent Operating System for Growth. New York: Currency, 2019. View Details
- Book Chapters
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- Wallace, Christina. "Commerce and Culture: Combining Business and the Arts." In Passion and Purpose: Stories from the Best and Brightest Young Business Leaders, edited by W. Oliver Segovia, Daniel Gulati, and John Coleman. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press, 2011. View Details
- Cases and Teaching Materials
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- Tango, Jo, Christina Wallace, Srimayi Mylavarapu, and Johnson Elugbadebo. "Sequoia Capital." Harvard Business School Case 824-212, June 2024. (Revised September 2024.) View Details
- Wallace, Christina, Henry McGee, Rohit Deshpandé, and Max Hancock. "Out of Hand Theater: Monetizing Creativity." Harvard Business School Case 824-150, March 2024. (Revised April 2024.) View Details
- Tango, Jo, and Christina Wallace. "Venture Capital and Private Equity Funds: A Primer." Harvard Business School Technical Note 824-123, January 2024. View Details
- Tango, Jo, and Christina Wallace. "DexAI." Harvard Business School Case 824-030, August 2023. (Revised February 2024.) View Details
- Wallace, Christina, and Jo Tango. "To Found or to Cofound? That is the Question." Harvard Business School Case 824-034, September 2023. View Details
- Iyoha, Ebehi, and Christina Wallace. "Wordle." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 824-004, July 2023. (Revised October 2023.) View Details
- Wallace, Christina, Jo Tango, and Johnson Elugbadebo. "Tenkara Outfitters." Harvard Business School Spreadsheet Supplement 824-701, August 2023. View Details
- Wallace, Christina, Jo Tango, and Johnson Elugbadebo. "Tenkara Outfitters." Harvard Business School Case 824-003, August 2023. View Details
- Wallace, Christina, and Jo Tango. "The Entrepreneurial Manager: Spring 2024." Harvard Business School Course Overview Note 823-071, November 2022. (Revised December 2023.) View Details
- Mills, Karen G., Christina Wallace, Ebehi Iyoha, Gabriella Elanbeck, and Morgane Herculano. "Wordle." Harvard Business School Case 323-032, September 2022. (Revised November 2023.) View Details
- Wallace, Christina. "Metric." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 822-094, April 2022. View Details
- Wallace, Christina, Rebecca Cink, and Maria Lappas. "Metric." Harvard Business School Case 822-057, March 2022. View Details
- Wallace, Christina. "Sparking Growth at Consumer Reports." Harvard Business School Teaching Note 822-062, January 2022. View Details
- Wallace, Christina. "Sparking Growth at Consumer Reports." Harvard Business School PowerPoint Supplement 822-066, January 2022. View Details
- Wallace, Christina. "Sparking Growth at Consumer Reports." Harvard Business School Case 822-035, October 2021. View Details
- Wallace, Christina. "Workshop Exercise: Branding New Ventures." Harvard Business School Exercise 821-089, April 2021. (Revised August 2021.) View Details
- Teaching
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Christina Wallace teaches Launching Tech Ventures in the second-year MBA program and is co-course head for The Entrepreneurial Manager in the first-year MBA program. She also leads the MBA Startup Bootcamp immersion program and guest teaches in several executive education programs. Previously, she taught the Entrepreneurial Marketing course.
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