Elizabeth Doty

Elizabeth Doty is an author, facilitator, and researcher focused on increasing the positive societal impact of business. She currently serves as the Director of the Corporate Political Responsibility Taskforce at the Erb Institute for Sustainability in Business at the University of Michigan, whose mission is to help companies better align their interactions with government and civil society with their commitments to values, purpose, sustainability and stakeholders. As a Lab Fellow at the Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University, Elizabeth’s research with Dr. Maryam Kouchaki and Harvard Business School Professor Francesca Gino surfaced seven breakdowns that undermine companies’ ability to deliver on their commitments to stakeholders, including customers, employees, shareholders and the communities where they do business. Based on that research and the resulting working paper, “Commitments, Disrupted: Understanding and Addressing Commitment Drift in For-Profit Enterprises”, Elizabeth was recognized as a National Thought Leader in Trust by Trust Across America in 2016 and 2017.

For 27 years, Elizabeth has led Leadership Momentum, a boutique consultancy that has helped clients in over a dozen industries clarify their values and build cultures of commitment, collaboration and action. Her book, “The Compromise Trap: How to Thrive at Work without Selling your Soul,” explores the values issues professionals faced during the buildup to the financial crisis and offers six strategies leaders can use to help their organizations act with integrity under pressure.

Elizabeth earned her MBA from Harvard Business School in 1991, serves as adjunct faculty for Presidio Graduate School, and writes regularly for strategy + business magazine, where her article “Does Your Company Keep its Promises?” continues as a top column, with over 30,000 views.

Publications

• Recognizing and Countering Authoritarian Threats to Democracy: What Role for Business?