Meet Tsedal

Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Research

Tsedal Neeley (@tsedal) is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean of Faculty Development and Research Strategy at the Harvard Business School. Recognized as one of the 100 people transforming business who are innovating, sparking trends, and tackling global challenges by Business Insider, her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies. She regularly advises top leaders who are embarking on virtual work and large scale-change that involves global expansion, digital transformation, and becoming more agile.

Her book, Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere (2021, Harper Collins Business), provides remote workers and leaders with the best practices necessary to perform at the highest levels in their organizations. Her award-winning book, The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations chronicles the behind-the-scenes globalization process of a company over the course of five years. She has also published extensively in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets such as Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Management Science, Journal of International Business, Strategic Management Journal and Harvard Business Review, and her work has been widely covered in media outlets such as BBC, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, and the Economist.

Her HBS case, Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, is one of the most used cases worldwide on the subject of virtual work. 

Tsedal co-chairs the executive offering, Leading Global Businesses, which helps top leaders develop emerging and mature market strategies in a global and increasingly digital economy. She also teaches extensively in executive programs such as the Harvard Business Analytics Program. She has previously been the course head for the first-year required Leadership and Organizational Behavior course in the MBA program that focuses on how to lead effectively; the curriculum addresses group behavior and performance, organization design, change and how to align people behind a common vision.

Prior to her academic career, Tsedal spent ten years working for companies like Lucent Technologies and The Forum Corporation in various roles, including strategies for global customer experience, 360-degree performance software management systems, sales force/sales management development, and business flow analysis for telecommunication infrastructures. A sought-after speaker with extensive international experience, she is fluent in four languages. She holds a patent for her software simulation on global collaboration and is a member of Rakuten People & Culture Lab Advisory Board. 

Tsedal is a recipient of the prestigious Charles M. Williams Award for Outstanding Teaching in Executive Education and the Greenhill Award for outstanding contributions to Harvard Business School (two-time recipient). She serves on the Board of Directors of Brightcove, Brown Capital Management, Harvard Business Publishing and the Partnership Inc.

Tsedal received her Ph.D. from Stanford University in Management Science and Engineering, specializing in Work, Technology and Organizations. Tsedal was named as the Top Thinkers in the World by Thinkers50 for making lasting contributions to management, honored as a Stanford Distinguished Alumnus Scholar and was a Stanford University School of Engineering Lieberman award recipient for excellence in teaching and research.

You’ve been a terrific source of insights and perspective on our Englishnization program at Rakuten. I’m sure your guidance and research would be of enormous value to any company’s globalization efforts.

Hiroshi Mikitani

CEO of Rakuten

Awards & Honors

Received the 2018-2019 Robert F. Greenhill Award for Outstanding Service to the HBS Community.

Received the 2018-2019 Robert F. Greenhill Award for Outstanding Service to the HBS Community.

Winner of the 2018 Axiom Business Book Award Bronze Medal in the International Business/Globalization category for The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2017).

Winner of the 2018 Axiom Business Book Award Bronze Medal in the International Business/Globalization category for The Language of Global Success: How a Common Tongue Transforms Multinational Organizations (Princeton University Press, 2017).

Included in the 2018 Thinkers50 On the Radar list—a list of “emerging thinkers with the potential to make lasting contributions to management theory and practice.”

Included in the 2018 Thinkers50 On the Radar list—a list of “emerging thinkers with the potential to make lasting contributions to management theory and practice.”

Received the 2015 Charles M. Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Received the 2015 Charles M. Williams Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Awarded the 2012 Marvin Bower Fellowship by Harvard Business School to support research by outstanding scholars.

Awarded the 2012 Marvin Bower Fellowship by Harvard Business School to support research by outstanding scholars.

Honored as a 2013 Stanford Distinguished Alumnus Scholar.

Honored as a 2013 Stanford Distinguished Alumnus Scholar.

Received the 2006–2007 Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship award at the School of Engineering for excellence in teaching and research.

Received the 2006–2007 Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship award at the School of Engineering for excellence in teaching and research.

Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship award at the School of Engineering for excellence in teaching and research.

Stanford University Lieberman Fellowship award at the School of Engineering for excellence in teaching and research.

Recognized as one of the 100 people transforming business

Recognized as one of the 100 people transforming business

Top Thinkers in the World by Thinkers50

Top Thinkers in the World by Thinkers50

Cases & Teaching Materials

Neeley, Tsedal. “Shellye Archambeau: Becoming a CEO.” Harvard Business School Teaching Note 421-058, January 2021. View Details

Neeley, Tsedal. “Shellye Archambeau: Becoming a CEO.” Harvard Business School Teaching Note 421-058, January 2021. View Details

Neeley, Tsedal. “Six Simple Steps to Action Planning.” Harvard Business School Background Note 421-033, August 2020. View Details

Neeley, Tsedal, and Briana Richardson. “Shellye Archambeau: Becoming a CEO (B).” Harvard Business School Supplement 420-073, June 2020.  View Details

Neeley, Tsedal, and John Masko. “Shellye Archambeau: Becoming a CEO (A).” Harvard Business School Case 420-071, June 2020.  View Details

Neeley, Tsedal, Paul Leonardi, and Michael Norris. “Eric Hawkins Leading Agile Teams @ Digitally-Born AppFolio (B).” Harvard Business School Supplement 419-088, June 2019. (Revised February 2020.)  View Details

Neeley, Tsedal, Paul Leonardi, and Michael Norris. “Eric Hawkins Leading Agile Teams @ Digitally-Born AppFolio (A).” Harvard Business School Case 419-066, June 2019. (Revised February 2020.)  View Details

Neeley, Tsedal, and Julia Kelley. “The Global-Local Tension: Vodafone CEO Vittorio Colao Leading with ‘International Values and Local Roots’ (A) and (B).” Harvard Business School Teaching Note 419-063, June 2019.  View Details

Neeley, Tsedal, and JT Keller. “From Globalization to Dual Digital Transformation: CEO Thierry Breton Leading Atos Into ‘Digital Shockwaves’ (B).” Harvard Business School Supplement 419-046, April 2019.  View Details

Global Collaboration Software Simulation

This online simulation teaches students about the difficulties in cross-cultural communication and managing global teams. Communicating via chat, teams of 4 or 5 students race against the clock to prepare a VC presentation. Students are assigned the role of a native English speaker or a nonnative English speaker at their organization. The simulation constrains the ways in which the native and nonnative speakers can interact, and the resulting experience replicates communication patterns in real globally diverse and distributed teams. As their team struggles to collaborate, students experience first-hand how communication challenges can interfere with work goals.