Dr. Deborah Kolb is Deloitte Ellen Gabriel Professor for Women and Leadership (Emerita) and Co-founder of the Ford Foundation funded Center for Gender in Organizations at the Simmons School of Management. Deborah was Former Executive Director and is currently Co-Director of the Negotiations in the Workplace Project at the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. She is a strategic advisor and mentor to many of today’s most successful executive women and also served as Faculty Research Fellow at Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research in 2008-2009, and is Adjunct Faculty at INSEAD. Professor Kolb is an authority on gender issues in negotiation and leadership. She is the author of several books important books on this subject. Her most recent, Negotiating at Work: Turn Small Wins into Big Gains (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley, 2015), was named by Time.com as one of the best negotiation books of 2015. Her book Everyday Negotiation: Navigating the Hidden Agendas of Bargaining (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley, 2003) shows women (and men) how they can become more effective in their everyday negotiations by attending to the dual requirements of the shadow negotiation – advocacy for oneself and connection with others. Originally titled The Shadow Negotiation, Harvard Business Review named it one of the ten best business books of 2000 and it received the best book award from the International Association of Conflict Management at its meetings in Paris, 2001. Her Place at the Table: A Women’s Guide to Negotiating the Five Challenges of Leadership Success (Jossey-Bass/John Wiley, 2010) describes how successful women negotiate for what they need to be effective in leadership roles at all levels of an organization. In addition to her research and writing,, Deborah organizes and leads executive development programs and serves as a consultant to organizations interested in retaining and advancing their best women leaders. Most recently these include The White House (for political appointees returning to the private sector), Deloitte, Dell Computer, Thomson Reuters, Time Warner, Google, Medtronic, and The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation through its African Women in Agricultural Research and Development (AWARD) among others. Kolb has been awarded the Outstanding Achievement Award for her contributions to women’s leadership issues by the Equality Commission of the Massachusetts Bar Association, the Boston Bar Association, and the Massachusetts Women’s Bar Association. Professor Kolb is the author of The Mediators (MIT Press, 1983), an in-depth study of labor mediation and co-editor of Hidden Conflict In Organizations: Uncovering Behind-The-Scenes Disputes (Sage, 1992), a collection of field studies about how conflicts are handled in a variety of business and not-for-profit organizations. She has published a study of the practice of successful mediators, Making Talk Work: Profiles of Mediators (Jossey-Bass, 1994). Kolb is also the editor of Negotiation Eclectics: Essays in Memory of Jeffrey Z. Rubin (Program on Negotiation, 1999). She has authored over 100 articles on the subjects of gender, negotiation, conflict in organizations, and mediation. Her most recent “Be Your Own Best Advocate” appeared in the Harvard Business Review (November 2105). Dr. Kolb is on the editorial boards of the Negotiation Journal, Negotiation and Conflict Management Research, and The Harvard Negotiation Newsletter. Deborah Kolb received her Ph.D. from MIT’s Sloan School of Management, where her dissertation won the Zannetos Prize for outstanding doctoral scholarship. She has a BA from Vassar College and an MBA from the University of Colorado.