Headshot of Lynn S. Paine

Lynn S. Paine

Baker Foundation Professor John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration, Emerita

Lynn Sharp Paine is a Baker Foundation Professor and John G. McLean Professor of Business Administration, Emerita, at Harvard Business School. A member and former chair of the General Management unit, she has served in numerous leadership positions including Senior Associate Dean for International Development, Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development, and chair of the School’s required course on Leadership and Corporate Accountability, which she co-founded.  She currently teaches Corporate Governance and Boards of Directors in the MBA program and co-chairs the School’s executive programs on corporate governance, including Making Corporate Boards More EffectiveWomen on BoardsPreparing to Be a Corporate Director, and Advanced Corporate Director Seminar.

Ms. Paine has written widely on leadership and corporate governance, focusing on how companies can meld high ethical standards with outstanding financial results. Her latest book is Capitalism at Risk, Updated and Expanded: How Business Can Lead (HBR Press, 2020), with HBS colleagues Joe Bower and Dutch Leonard. Her recent publications also include “How Robust Is Your Climate Governance?,” “The Business Roundtable’s Stakeholder Pledge, Five Years Later,” “What Does ‘Stakeholder Capitalism’ Mean to You?,” "Covid-19 Is Rewriting the Rules of Corporate Governance," "A Guide to the Big Ideas and Debates in Corporate Governance," “The Error at the Heart of Corporate Leadership,” and “Sustainability in the Boardroom" — all published in the Harvard Business Review. She has written more than 200 cases, course notes, 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 member of the International Advisory Council for the Brazilian business school Fundação Dom Cambral (FDC), and a Faculty Associate of Harvard University’s Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. She is a recipient of the Faculty Pioneer Lifetime Achievement Award from The Aspen Institute Center for Business Education for her innovative course development, and the Rendanheyi Badge Lifetime Achievement Award (China) for her research and contributions to management theory and practice.  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, and served two terms as a member of the Governing Board of the Center for Audit Quality (CAQ).  She also served as a director of Atos SE, an international digital services company.

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 and her husband, Tom Paine, live in Wellesley, Massachusetts.