Professor Westfahl joined HLS from the law firm Goodwin Procter LLP, where he served from 2004-2013 as the firm’s Director of Professional Development. In that role, he was responsible for all aspects of the professional development of the firm’s attorneys and staff, focusing on organizational and leadership development, feedback, mentoring, career progression, diversity, professional skills training, attorney and staff integration and transitions and alumni.  As a Lecturer on Law from 2010-2013, he teamed with Professor David Wilkins to teach an 80-student section of the law school’s Problem Solving Workshop for first-year students.  In 2008, Professor Westfahl was chosen as one of Law Firm, Inc. magazine’s five “Innovators of the Year” for his development of a cutting edge attorney assignment system and database called iStaff, which effectively ties attorney work assignments to their professional development needs. From 2009 to 2011, he served as the Chair of the Professional Development Consortium, a 450-member professional association for law firm professional development and training leaders across North America and the U.K.  Professor Westfahl frequently lectures and comments upon talent development within professional services firms and is the author of the book You Get What You Measure: Lawyer Development Frameworks and Effective Performance Evaluations (NALP, 2008).

Prior to his work at Goodwin Procter, Professor Westfahl spent six years leading professional development for the Washington, D.C. office of McKinsey & Company. He is also an experienced business and federal regulatory attorney, having practiced law with Foley & Lardner’s Washington, D.C. office from 1988 to 1998.  Professor Westfahl earned his J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1988, and graduated summa cum laude from Dartmouth College in 1985.

Recent articles and white papers:

The Leadership Imperative: A Collaborative Approach to Professional Development in the Global Age of More for Less | Stanford Law Review

The Elephant In The Room: Advancing Women To Partnership | Law360

Leverage the Strength of Millennials: Finding Common Ground and Hidden Opportunities | PD Quarterly

His current scholarly projects include Globalization, Lawyers, and Emerging Economies, The State of Black Alumni at Harvard Law School, Disruptive Innovation in the Market for Legal Services, After the J.D., and the Reemergence of the Big Four Accountancy Networks in the Market for Legal Services.  Professor Wilkins teaches several courses on lawyers, including The Legal  Profession, and Challenges  of  a  General  Counsel. In  2007,  he  co-founded  Harvard  Law  School’s  Executive  Education  Program,  where  he  teaches  in  several  courses  including  Leadership  in  Law  Firms and  Leadership  in  Corporate  Counsel.

Previously on the faculty at Harvard Business School, she teaches continues to teach executive courses at HBS, Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard’s learning centers in Shanghai, China and Doha, Qatar. She is also an International Research Fellow at Oxford University’s Said Business School.

Dr. Gardner’s research was awarded the Academy of Management’s prize for Outstanding Practical Implications for Management. She has published articles in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Harvard Business Review, Law Practice Today, and the Financial Times. She has also published numerous book chapters focusing on organizational behavior, cultural intelligence, multinational teams, professional collaboration, and the management of professional service firms. Her research has been featured in media such as The Economist, Boston Globe, MSN.com, CNN Money, Fortune.com and CBSNews.com.

Dr. Gardner  earned a BA in Japanese Studies from the University of Pennsylvania (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), a Masters from the London School of Economics (highest distinction) and a second Masters and PhD from London Business School. Dr. Gardner has lived and worked on four continents. She previously worked as a management consultant for McKinsey & Co. in London, Johannesburg and New York, and as a manager for Procter & Gamble. She also held a Fulbright fellowship in Germany, and studied and taught in Japan.

Professor Sale is a member of the FINRA Board of Governors, where she serves on the Nominating and Governance, Compensation, and Regulatory Operations Committees. She is also a member of the Advisory Board of Foundation Press, and the Advisory Board of DirectWomen, a nonprofit with the mission of increasing the presence of women on public company boards. She is Chair of the DirectWomen Board Institute and also works in industry training executives on leadership, governance, and risk management.

Professor Sale is a leading scholar in the areas of corporate governance and the role of corporate and securities law in shaping board decision-making and strategies and has authored many award-winning articles. Professor Sale is co-author (with John C. Coffee, Jr. and Charles K. Whitehead) of the book Securities Regulation and is a member of the Committee on Corporate Laws of the ABA, where she co-chaired the task force for the Sixth Edition of the Corporate Director’s Guidebook. Professor Sale is also a Fellow of the American College of Governance Counsel.

Before entering academia, Sale was a law clerk to The Honorable Richard S. Arnold, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, practiced with the law firm of WilmerHale LLP, and was Chief of Staff and Director of Operations for Evelyn F. Murphy, the Lieutenant Governor of Massachusetts. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard Law School in 1993 and holds a master’s degree in Economics from Boston University, where she also completed her B.A., summa cum laude in 1983. From 1997-2009, she was a member of the University of Iowa College of Law, where she was the F. Arnold Daum Chair in Corporate Finance and Law, and from 2009-2018, she was the Walter D. Coles Professor of Law and a Professor of Management at Washington University in St. Louis.

He has testified before Congress and provided consulting services to the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), the U.S. Department of Treasury, the New York Stock Exchange, and participants in the financial markets, including hedge funds, investment banks, and private equity funds. He served as independent consultant for the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in one of the first “Fair Fund” distributions (an enforcement action regarding payment for order flow), and one of the largest distributions ($306 million relating to market timing and late trading), and is currently the Chair of the Investor-as-Owner Subcommittee of the Investor Advisory Committee of the SEC. He has served as an independent representative of individual and institutional clients of institutional trustees and money managers, and currently is serving as a DOJ-appointed independent monitor for one of the Global Systemically Important Financial Institutions.

Recently recognized by the ABA as a Legal Rebel, Michele is an expert in entrepreneurship and innovation in the law. Her scholarship focuses on the growing intersections between law and business and legal innovation. Through qualitative interviews of general counsels and other professional service providers, Michele’s research investigates the impact changes in the law and business marketplace (including litigation funding, social media, public relations, regulation) will have on the legal profession and its potential for innovation. Her latest published research included over seventy interviews of general counsels and chief compliance officers of large, publicly traded corporations to analyze and assess the changing role of compliance and ethics.  Currently, she is interviewing chief legal officers of publicly traded corporations and chief innovation officers of law firms for her upcoming book: Innovation Tournament in Law: Changing the Way Lawyers Collaborate.

In addition to spearheading LawWithoutWalls, Michele presents regularly on Innovation, Teaming, Collaboration/Culture Creation, Compliance and Ethics, Technology and Education, and Litigation Funding. She teaches courses on the changing legal profession, law, technology, and innovation, civil procedure, professional responsibility, and compliance and ethics. She is also Guest Faculty in Harvard Law School’s Executive Education program and Affiliated Faculty at Harvard Law School’s Center for the Legal Profession.

From 2003 to 2004, Michele clerked for Chief Judge William G. Young of the Federal District Court of Massachusetts. She also worked for a year as a Special Master on a patent law case. Before attending law school, she was a Senior Marketing Manager at Levi Strauss & Company (1995-1998) and an Account Executive at Leo Burnett Advertising Company (1991-1995). Michele earned a J.D., magna cum laude, from Harvard Law School and a B.A., magna cum laude, from Dartmouth College and has been admitted to the Massachusetts, Minnesota, and District of Columbia bars.

In 2011 he also accepted a joint appointment to the faculty of Harvard Law School as a tenured Professor of Law. He received his Ph.D. in political economy from Harvard University; his MBA as a Baker Scholar from Harvard Business School; and a bachelors degree in history and economics from Brown University. In 1994, he was a Fulbright Scholar to India.

Professor Desai’s areas of expertise include tax policy, international finance and corporate finance. His academic publications have appeared in leading economics, finance and public economics journals. His work has emphasized the appropriate design of tax policy in a globalized setting, the links between corporate governance and taxation, and the internal capital markets of multinational firms.  His research has been cited in The Economist, BusinessWeek, The New York Times, and several other publications. He is also the author of International Finance: A Casebook (New York: John Wiley & Sons, 2006) which features his many case studies on international corporate finance.

He is a Research Associate in the National Bureau of Economic Research’s Public Economics and Corporate Finance Programs, and is the co-director of the NBER’s India program. He is also on the Advisory Board of the International Tax Policy Forum.

Professor Desai teaches a second-year elective on International Financial Management and he co-teaches Public Economics at Harvard College. He received the Student Association Award for teaching excellence from the HBS Class of 2001. His professional experiences include working at CS First Boston, McKinsey & Co., and advising a number of firms and governmental organizations.

In her first book, “Sidetracked: Why Our Decisions Get Derailed and How We Can Stick to the Plan” (Harvard Business Review Press, February 2013), she explores inconsistent decisions played out in a wide range of circumstances – from our roles as consumers, employees and leaders to the choices we make more broadly as human beings. By recognizing the common forces that derail our decisions and then correcting them, we can more successfully stay on track in both our personal and professional lives.

Professor Gino’s research on judgment and decision making, negotiation, social influence, ethics and creativity have been discussed on CNN and NPR, featured in leading business publications, including Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Newsweek and Scientific American, and published in numerous academic journals, including Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Organization Science and Psychological Science. She has earned major research awards from the National Science Foundation and the Academy of Management.

In addition to teaching, she advises firms and not-for-profit organizations in the areas of negotiation, decision making and organizational behavior. Before joining the HBS faculty, Professor Gino taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Kenan-Flagler Business School and at the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. Prior to her Carnegie Mellon appointment, she spent two years at HBS as a postdoctoral fellow, lecturer and senior researcher. A native of Italy, Professor Gino holds a Ph.D. in economics and management from the Sant’Anna School of Advanced Studies in Pisa. She is a magna cum laude graduate of the University of Trento.

His course Strategies Beyond the Market is a popular elective class for second-year MBA students. Professor Oberholzer-Gee won numerous awards for excellence in teaching, including the Harvard Business School Class of 2006 Faculty Teaching Award for best teacher in the core curriculum, and the 2002 Helen Kardon Moss Anvil Award for best teacher in the Wharton MBA program. Prior to his academic career, Professor Oberholzer-Gee served as managing director of Symo Electronics, a Swiss-based process control company.

Professor Oberholzer-Gee’s research and consulting are centered on competitive strategy, international competition, and non-market strategy, a branch of strategic management that studies how companies best work with government and non-governmental groups. In recent work, he studied how entertainment companies can successfully manage the digital transition. Dating back to a study abroad program as an undergraduate, Professor Oberholzer-Gee has a long-standing interest in the Chinese economy and Chinese companies. In recent academic work, he compared the financial performance of Chinese companies with the performance of multinationals operating in China. In a related study, he explored how and why Chinese companies diversify their activities. Professor Oberholzer-Gee’s academic work has been published in the very best, peer-reviewed journals of his profession, including the American Economic Review, Journal of Political Economy, Journal of Financial Economics, and Journal of Law & Economics. His work has been profiled by media outlets around the world, including ABC Nightly News, Financial Times, Guardian, Le Figaro, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, New York Times, Singapore Straits Times, Süddeutsche Zeitung, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Trumbull’s core interest is with consumer politics. He is author of Consumer Capitalism: Politics, Product Markets, and Firm Strategy in France and Germany (Cornell University Press, 2006), which explores the political roots of consumer protection policies that emerged in France and Germany beginning in the 1970s. He is also the author of two new books. Strength in Numbers: The Political Power of Weak Interests (Harvard University Press, forthcoming) investigates the sources of interest group influence on public policy. He argues that diffuse groups like consumers are more influential, and industry less influential, than we commonly assume. Consumer Credit in Postwar America and France: The Political Construction of Economic Interest (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming) explores the politics and business of consumer lending over the 20th century. He argues that America came to see credit as a form of welfare policy that could take the place of an expansive welfare state.

Trumbull also conducts research on technology policy. His book, Silicon and the State: French Innovation Policy in the Internet Age (2004), traces France’s policy response in the late-1990s to the apparent success of the Silicon Valley model of technology innovation.