Ben Barry is an Associate Professor of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion at the School of Fashion and Founding Director of the Centre for Fashion Diversity & Social Change at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. He holds an MPhil in Innovation, Strategy and Organization and a PhD in Management from Judge Business School at Cambridge University.

Ben’s mission is to use fashion to design a better world by celebrating diversity, disrupting gender norms and empowering differences. Using multidisciplinary methods, his research uncovers the experiences of people—especially of those who are marginalized due to race, body type and other axes of identity—when engaging with fashion images and clothing. His work has appeared in journals such as Men and Masculinities and the International Journal of Advertising, and his forthcoming book Refashioning Masculinity: Men and Fashion in the Digital Age will be published by the University of Chicago Press.

Before his academic career, Ben founded the first modeling agency in the world dedicated to promoting models of all shapes, ages and abilities.

Dr. Catherine Connell is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Boston University. Dr. Connell is a qualitative researcher focused on the intersections of gender, sexuality, and work/organizations. Her recent book, School’s Out: Gay and Lesbian Teachers in the Classroom, considers the experiences of gay and lesbian identified teachers in California and Texas. In the book, Connell asks: how do gay and lesbian teachers grapple with their professional and sexual identities at work, given that they are constructed as mutually exclusive, even indeed as mutually opposed?

Dr. Connell’s current research project considers the legal and cultural ramifications of recent gender and sexual policy change in the US military, from the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell to the gender integration of the combat arms. In addition to her research and teaching, Dr. Connell is the Director of the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Boston University.

Peter Glick, PhD is the Henry Merritt Wriston Professor of the Social Sciences at Lawrence University in Wisconsin. His scholarship focuses on biases and stereotyping. Dr. Glick presented at HBS’s first Gender and Work conference in 2013. As a visiting Professor of Management and Organizations at Northwestern University, he co-designed the Kellogg School of Management’s first diversity management course. Along with Dr. Robert Livingston (Harvard Kennedy School), he developed anti-bias training for Airbnb.

Dr. Glick co-developed the warmth-competence model (with Susan T. Fiske, Princeton, and Amy Cuddy, Harvard), recognized as a "breakthrough idea" in the Harvard Business Review. His foundational work on benevolent sexism (with Fiske) received the Allport Prize for best paper on intergroup relations. Tested worldwide, both models represent revolutionary advances in understanding stereotypes and are among the most highly cited theories in social psychology. In addition to more than 80 articles and chapters, Dr. Glick has co-edited or co-authored three books, including the SAGE Handbook of Prejudice and The Social Psychology of Gender.

Margaret Morganroth Gullette is a cultural critic and prize-winning writer of nonfiction, an internationally known age critic, essayist, and activist. Her forthcoming book is titled Ending Ageism, or How Not to Shoot Old People (August 2017, Rutgers University Press). Her most recent book, Agewise, won a 2012 Eric Hoffer Book Award. Aged by Culture (2004) was chosen as a “Noteworthy Book of the Year” by the Christian Science Monitor. Declining to Decline (1997) won the Emily Toth Award as the best feminist book on American popular culture.

Margaret’s focus on the midlife (in Safe at Last in the Middle Years and Declining to Decline) has expanded into the field of Age Studies, now institutionalized in two international networks of age scholars called NANAS and ENAS. Age, studied from childhood on, can be as powerful a concept as gender or race, by empowering people to challenge decline culture and join an anti-ageist movement. Margaret is a Resident Scholar at the Women's Studies Research Center, Brandeis University.

Arlie Russell Hochschild is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Her fall 2016 book, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, addresses the increasingly bitter political divide in America. A finalist for the National Book Award, the book is based on five years of immersion reporting among Tea Party loyalists—now mostly supporters of Donald Trump. Hochschild tries to bridge an "empathy wall" between the two political sides, to explore the "deep story" underlying the right that remains unrecognized by the left. Mark Danner calls the book "a powerful, imaginative, necessary book, arriving not a moment too soon." Robert Reich writes "Anyone who wants to understand modern America should read this captivating book."

Her 2012 The Outsourced Self: Intimate Life in Market Times, explores the many ways in which the market enters our modern lives and was named one of the best books of the year by Publishers Weekly. Her other books include: So How's the Family?, The Managed Heart, The Second Shift, The Time Bind, The Commercialization of Intimate Life, The Unexpected Community and the co-edited Global Woman: Nannies, Maids and Sex Workers in the New Economy.

Herminia Ibarra is the Cora Chaired Professor of Leadership and Learning and Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD. Prior to joining INSEAD she served on the Harvard Business School faculty for thirteen years. She is a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Councils, a judge for the Financial Times/McKinsey Business Book of the Year Award, and chairs the Visiting Committee of the Harvard Business School. Thinkers 50 ranked Ibarra #8 among the most influential management thinkers in the world.

Professor Ibarra is an expert on leadership development. Her most recent book, Act Like a Leader, Think Like a Leader (Harvard Business Review Press, 2015), explains how to step up to a bigger leadership role. Her best-selling book Working Identity: Unconventional Strategies for Reinventing Your Career describes how people reinvent their careers. She will deliver the 2017 Clarendon Lectures in Management Studies at Oxford University, Said Business School.

Author of numerous articles in the Harvard Business Review and other top academic journals, Ibarra also writes for business media including the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, and speaks internationally on leadership and talent management. A native of Cuba, Ibarra received her M.A. and Ph.D. from Yale University, where she was a National Science Fellow.

Nadia P. Manzoor is a British Pakistani actor, writer, and producer, whose critically acclaimed autobiographical one-woman show, BurqOff!, has sold out in New York, LA, San Francisco, London, Toronto, and Seoul. She is the creator of Shugs & Fats, a Gotham Award winning web series that spotlights the Muslim American experience through slapstick comedy. She was recently named one of the twenty-five new faces of Independent Film by Filmmaker Magazine.

Nadia's mission is to bring light to cultural shadow through storytelling, challenging the status quo through laughter. She is a frequent guest speaker on panels that focus on diversity in entertainment and the social construct of gender in South Asian culture. She has appeared on CNN, The BBC, and NPR and has been featured in The Huffington Post, The Daily Beast, and The Times of India. Her thoughts on feminism, leadership and the cognitive dissonance of the immigrant experience have appeared in TEDx talks, and Double Blind, an anthology of essays on female ambition. To fuse her interests in performance and social justice, she founded Paprika Productions, an all-female production company that seeks to share the stories from cultural perspectives underrepresented in mainstream entertainment.

Tina Opie is an Assistant Professor in the Management Division at Babson College, teaching organizational behavior courses to undergraduates, MBA students and executives. Professor Opie obtained her Ph.D. in Management (with a concentration in organizational behavior) in May 2010 from New York University’s Stern School of Business. In 1999, she obtained her MBA from the Darden School of Business.

Professor Opie’s research focuses primarily on how organizations can create workplace cultures that successfully leverage individual difference and convey respect for individual contributions, particularly from members of historically marginalized groups.

Elle Pérez is an artist from the Bronx, NY who works primarily in photography. Pérez's work is a celebration of the erotics of underground communities and the possibilities inherent to marginal spaces and identities. Pérez teaches photography at Williams College and is a Dean at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture.

Gianpiero Petriglieri is Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at INSEAD. He directs the Management Acceleration Program, the school’s flagship executive program for emerging leaders, and the INSEAD initiative for Learning Innovation and Teaching Excellence. He has held Visiting Professor positions at the Harvard Business School and at Copenhagen Business School.

His award-winning research and teaching focus on what it means, and what it takes, to become a leader in the age of “nomadic professionalism,” in which people have deep bonds to work but loose affiliations to organizations, and authenticity and mobility have replaced loyalty and advancement as hallmarks of virtue and success. Building on his research, Gianpiero has contributed to refining a unique approach to leadership development that aims to deepen and accelerate the development of individual leaders as well as to broaden and strengthen leadership communities within and across organizations. Alongside academic journals, Gianpiero writes regularly for the Harvard Business Review. He has chaired the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on leadership and was shortlisted for the “Leadership” award by Thinkers50, the ranking of the most influential management thinkers in the world.

Laura Morgan Roberts is Professor of Psychology, Culture and Organization Studies at Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change. She is also a Visiting Scholar with the Harvard Business School Leadership Initiative, researching the influence of African American business leaders at HBS and beyond. Laura is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Positive Organizations at the University of Michigan (Ann Arbor) and the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons School of Management (Boston).

Laura’s research centers on cultivating positive identities in diverse work organizations. She examines these processes through the lens of: best-self actualization, strategic authenticity, image management, positive relationships, racial, cultural and gender diversity, strengths-based development, spirituality, change leadership and value creation. Laura co-edited Positive Organizing in a Global Society (with Lynn Wooten and Martin Davidson) and Exploring Positive Identities and Organizations (with Jane Dutton) and has published several articles, case studies, and poems related to diversity and positive organizing. Laura earned her MA and PhD (organizational psychology) from the University of Michigan and BA (psychology, highest distinction) from the University of Virginia.

Kortney Ziegler is the founder of Trans*H4CK, an award-winning tech organization that provides support and visibility for trans technologists and founders. He is also the director of the award-winning documentary STILL BLACK: a portrait of black transmen. Ziegler was the first person to receive the PhD of African-American studies from Northwestern University.

The Bok Center for Teaching and Learning at Harvard’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences recently established an Applied Theatre Practice Program as part of its ongoing exploration of innovation in instruction. Applied Theatre is an evolving field where various methodologies, skills, or practices native to theater disciplines are applied in non-theatrical settings. This practice facilitates experiences of teaching and learning that are both visceral and intellectual. The Initiative at the Bok Center is currently partnering with FAS academic departments, staff, and other Harvard partners to develop ways that the methods of theatre can act as vehicles for maximizing effective pedagogy.

The Applied Theatre Practice Program also houses the Bok Players, an ensemble of actors using interactive theatre to examine issues of academic equity. The Bok Center Players were originally formed in 2007 by Lee Warren, Associate Director Emerita, in direct response to the Harvard WISE report (Women in Science and Engineering), a report which, like many others published by universities nationwide, pointed to a gender disparity in the sciences.

Sponsored by the Vice Provost's Office of Faculty Development and Diversity, the group originally piloted several programs focusing on gender in science, and over the next few years widened its scope to include issues of diversity, inclusion, and equity more broadly. The Players have performed extensively on campus and at other colleges and universities throughout New England. Their work sparks valuable dialogue among faculty, students, and administrators.

Mara Sidmore, Artistic Director of Applied Theatre, directs the Bok Players and works with faculty and students to extend principles from the theatre to the practice of teaching and learning, with the goal of developing creative, full-body approaches to pedagogy and curriculum. Mara is a classically trained actor and seasoned educator. In addition to her role at Harvard she is the Director of Education and a Resident Acting Company Member at Actors’ Shakespeare Project, an award-winning professional theatre company. She also works as a Senior Facilitator for The Ariel Group, where she trains executives across the globe using the tools of the theatre for more effective communication and leadership development.

Mara’s career as an educator and artist is inextricably linked to early experiences of theatre as a powerful tool for human and cultural development. She is passionate about applied theatre in adult learning environments, diversity and cross-cultural training, change management, and creating transformational learning environments in unusual spaces. Mara holds a Bachelor of Science in Education and a Master of Fine Arts in Acting from The American Repertory Theater / Moscow Art Theater Institute for Advanced Theater Training program at Harvard.