Leigh Hafrey

Leigh Hafrey is a senior lecturer in behavioral and policy sciences at the MIT Sloan School of Management, specializing in business ethics, ethical leadership, and communication. Hafrey has worked extensively in professional ethics, teaching courses at Harvard Business School and MIT Sloan, and consulting with practitioners across various industries. At MIT Sloan, he teaches ethics and leadership in the MBA and Leaders for Global Operations programs and has moderated seminars in the China LGO, Master of Finance, MIT Portugal, Supply Chain Management, and System Design and Management programs. He has also taught leadership and ethics modules for the MIT-China Management Education Project at Tsinghua, Fudan, and Sun Yat-Sen Universities.

Hafrey has contributed to leadership development beyond the classroom, serving as co-master of Mather House at Harvard College and moderating seminars for more than two decades in programs of the Aspen Institute. His work with the Aspen Institute includes moderating the Executive Seminar program, Rodel Fellows in Public Leadership, Socrates Society, Philanthropy & Social Innovation, and Ideas Festival, as well as seminars for Aspen partners in France, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Romania, Spain, the UK, Ukraine, and the Aspen Young European Leaders. Hafrey has also participated in the World Economic Forum, contributing to panels on leadership and cultural diversity and moderating a seminar in ethics at the WEF Davos Annual Meeting. He has co-moderated the business seminar for Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics, a program examining the role of professionals in the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust.

Hafrey has received recognition for his contributions to business education, including being named MIT Sloan Teacher of the Year and, with a faculty team, receiving the Aspen Institute Business and Society Program's "Ideas Worth Teaching" Award for the course "Bridging the American Divides," also known as "USA Lab."

A writer and public intellectual, Hafrey has served as a staff editor at The New York Times Book Review and published translations, columns, feature articles, essays, reviews, and interviews in The New York Times and other periodicals, as well as blog posts and business case studies for MIT Sloan. He serves on the editorial advisory board of Philosophy of Management and the Journal of Business Ethics Education. Hafrey is the author of two books on values and leadership: "The Story of Success: Five Steps to Mastering Ethics in Business" and "War Stories: Fighting, Competing, Imagining, Leading."

Hafrey holds an AB in English from Harvard College and a PhD in comparative literature from Yale University. His background in the humanities informs his perspective that ethics is rooted in networks of relationships and that empathy is essential to ethical practice, shaping his contributions to business, academia, and public discourse.