Leslie K. John

Leslie K. John is a Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School. Currently, she teaches on the topics of Negotiation, Marketing and Behavioral Economics in various Executive Education courses, including in the Program for Leadership Development. She has also taught extensively in both the required and elective MBA curricula.

Professor John is a behavioral scientist who studies how people make decisions, and the wisdom or error of those decisions. In her primary line of research, Dr. John studies privacy decision-making, identifying what drives people to share or withhold personal information, as well as their reactions to firms’ and employers’ use of their personal data. In another line of research, Dr. John studies health decision-making, devising psychologically-informed interventions to help people make healthier choices.

Her work has been published in leading academic journals including the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Psychological Science, Management Science, The Journal of Marketing Research, and the Journal of the American Medical Association. It has received media coverage in outlets including the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, and Time Magazine. She has received numerous awards, including from the Association for Psychological Science and the Marketing Science Institute; and was named a Wired Innovation Fellow.

Professor John gives keynote talks and consults for a variety of companies and organizations. Past clients include: Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Genzyme, Glaxo Smith Kline, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Mars, Pepsico, Weight Watchers. She also provides expert testimony on issues of consumer behavior, privacy, and disclosure.

Professor John holds a Ph.D. in behavioral decision research from Carnegie Mellon University, where she also earned an M.Sc. in psychology and behavioral decision research. She completed her bachelor’s degree in psychology at the University of Waterloo.