Wendy Smith

Wendy K. Smith is the Dana J. Johnson Professor of Management and faculty director of the Women's Leadership Initiative at the Lerner College of Business and Economics, University of Delaware. Smith earned a doctorate in organizational behavior from Harvard Business School. She joined the University of Delaware faculty and co-founded the Women's Leadership Initiative, which offers leadership development programs for students, faculty, and professionals.

Smith's research centers on strategic paradoxes, examining how leaders and senior teams respond to contradictory agendas. She studies how organizations and their leaders simultaneously explore new possibilities while leveraging existing competencies, and how social enterprises address both social missions and financial goals. As a Fellow of the Academy of Management, her work on paradox theory explores how leaders manage interdependent, seemingly contradictory tensions, demonstrating that a both/and mindset can improve business performance in complex organizational environments. Smith is also among the youngest individuals named as an Academy of Management Fellow.

Smith co-authored the book "Both/And Thinking: Embracing Creative Tensions to Solve Your Toughest Problems" with Marianne Lewis. The book received the Thinkers50 Breakthrough Idea Award, was named to the Thinkers50 Top 10 New Management Books, was a finalist for the Next Big Idea Club, and became a No. 1 Amazon New Release. Smith has been recognized as a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher for being among the top 1 percent most-cited scholars for seven consecutive years and is the only person to have won the Academy of Management Decade Award twice. She has also been named one of the Top 50 Management Thinkers.

Smith was the first Lerner professor to receive the University of Delaware's Francis Alison Award, the university's highest faculty honor, and delivered her Alison Award lecture on "Paradox Theory: How Both/And Thinking Is Reshaping Leadership and Decision-Making." Her research has been published in Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Administrative Science Quarterly, Harvard Business Review, Organization Science, and Management Science. She has contributed to Forbes, Fast Company, and Newsweek. Her TEDx Talk explored "The Power of Paradox."

Smith has taught MBA and undergraduate courses at the University of Delaware, Harvard, and the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School. She has also taught executive and senior leadership teams on topics including interpersonal dynamics, emotional intelligence, high-performing teams, organizational change and innovation, crisis management, and managing strategic paradoxes. Smith works with executives and audiences at Fortune 500 companies such as Cisco, Microsoft, IBM, and Comcast, as well as nonprofits and social enterprises. Her work focuses on helping leaders address complex challenges related to team performance, organizational change, and innovation.