Lynn Paine

Lynn Sharp Paine is John G. McLean Professor and Senior Associate Dean of International Development at Harvard Business School. A member and former chair of the General Management unit, she co-founded the School’s required course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability and currently teaches Boards of Directors and Corporate Governance in the MBA program. She also teaches in various executive programs including Making Corporate Boards More Effective, Women on Boards, Leading Global Businesses, Senior Executive Program for China, and Senior Executive Program for Africa.

Ms. Paine''s research focuses on the leadership and governance of companies that meld high ethical standards with outstanding financial results. Her most recent book is Capitalism at Risk:  Rethinking the Role of Business (Harvard Business Review Press, 2011) with HBS colleagues Joe Bower and Dutch Leonard. Her recent articles include, “Sustainability in the Boardroom,” “The China Rules,” and “A Global Leader’s Guide to Managing Business Conduct” (the latter with HBS colleagues Rohit Deshpandé and Joshua Margolis)—all published in the Harvard Business Review. She has written more than 200 cases and articles, as well as the text and casebook Leadership, Ethics, and Organizational Integrity: A Strategic Perspective. Library Journal named her book Value Shift: Why Companies Must Merge Social and Financial Imperatives to Achieve Superior Performance (McGraw Hill, 2003) one of that year’s best business books.

Ms. Paine is a director of Atos SE (NYSE Euronext Paris), an international digital services company, and she recently completed two terms as a member of the Governing Board of the Center for Audit Quality in Washington, D.C. She is also a member of the academic council of the Hills Program on Governance and a Faculty Associate of Harvard University’s Safra Center for Ethics. For her innovative course development, she was given the Faculty Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award by The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education. Ms. Paine has served as a consultant to numerous firms, companies, and industry groups, and sat on various advisory boards and panels including The Conference Board’s Blue‐Ribbon Commission on Public Trust and Private Enterprise after Enron’s collapse and The Conference Board''s Task Force on Executive Compensation after the financial crisis.  She was a director of RiskMetrics Group from 2008 until it became part of MSCI in June 2010.

A summa cum laude graduate of Smith College, Ms. Paine holds a doctorate in moral philosophy from Oxford University and a law degree from the Harvard Law School. She practiced law with the Boston firm of Hill & Barlow early in her career.  Prior to joining the Harvard faculty, Ms. Paine taught at Georgetown University Business School and the University of Virginia''s Darden School of Business as well as National Cheng Chi University in Taiwan, where she was a Luce Scholar. She is a permanent member of the Henry Luce Foundation''s Luce Scholar Selection Panel.  She and her husband, Tom Paine, have three adult children and live in Wellesley, Massachusetts.