Sandra J. Sucher

Sandra J. Sucher is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School and an authority on organizational trust. At Harvard, Sucher studies how organizations build and maintain trust, focusing on the role of leadership in this process. She has authored more than 100 business cases, technical notes, video interviews, teaching notes, and three books. Before her academic career, Sucher served as chair of the Better Business Bureau, vice president at Fidelity Investments, and a senior executive at Filene's Basement, where she developed the proposal to expand the company from a single-unit business into a national chain. Her two decades of industry experience inform her research and offer practical insights for business leaders.

Sucher's work includes "The Power of Trust: How Companies Build It, Lose It, Regain It," co-authored with Shalene Gupta. The book presents a framework for understanding trust in organizations, examining elements such as competence, motives, means, and impact, and explores the business, economic, and societal implications of trust. Her earlier textbooks, "The Moral Leader: Challenges, Insights, and Tools" and "Teaching The Moral Leader: A Literature-based Leadership Course," introduce a literature-based approach to business ethics education. Sucher teaches the required MBA course "Leadership and Corporate Accountability" and the elective "The Moral Leader" at Harvard Business School.

Sucher's research also addresses workforce restructuring and the impact of layoffs. She examines the often-overlooked costs of layoffs, including loss of institutional knowledge, reduced employee engagement, increased turnover, and diminished innovation. Sucher argues that the negative effects of layoffs, such as damaged trust, can persist within organizations and that short-term cost savings do not guarantee long-term success. Her Harvard Business Review article "Layoffs That Don't Break Your Company" was selected as an HBR "Must Read," and she has contributed to the "Big Idea" series on trust for Harvard Business Review.

Sucher serves on the Edelman Trust Institute advisory board, collaborates with Deloitte on TrustIQ, a tool measuring trust in corporations and public sector organizations, and works with PwC on the Trust Leadership Institute. She provides expert commentary for Bloomberg, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, NPR, and Fortune. Through her research and public engagement, Sucher offers a framework for leaders to understand trust as a foundational element in building relationships with customers, employees, investors, and the public, addressing the evolving demands on organizations and their leadership.