Sharon Ravitch, Ph.D. is a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Ravitch’s consulting and coaching remit spans human, leadership, and organizational development and is grounded in a systemic sense-making approach for cultural and inclusive excellence. Ravitch’s work is cross-sector and interdisciplinary, informed by decades serving as a high-level advisor, trainer, and coach to leaders working across government, business, public health, social impact, and education to foster informed change and sustainable innovation. Ravitch’s learning designs and consultation drive adaptive learning, change, and innovation at the leader, team, organizational, state, national, and international levels. Ravitch has published eight leader-facing books including a seminal qualitative research text and books on adaptive leadership and organizations, evidence-based institutional change, rapid-cycle leader inquiry, and emergent design professional development.
Ravitch’s learning architectures drive the equity remit, cultivate emotional and cultural intelligence at individual and organizational levels, create the conditions to uncover invisible logics for informed decision-making, support assets-based organizational communication and change management, and inform organizational culture improvement. For over 25 years, Ravitch has designed and facilitated intensive learning, coaching, and consulting with leaders and teams in companies, CSR divisions, NGOs, international agencies, higher education units, consulting advisories, educational organizations, learning consortia, and boards. Ravitch designs and leads cross-sector Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging (DEIB) efforts with a focus on care and belonging. Through emergent-design professional development participants cultivate skills for effective cross-cultural communication and navigating identity-based stress.
Ravitch works closely with clients to design bespoke learning architectures that cultivate and integrate the skills, mindsets, and competencies needed for agility in complex roles, organizations, and systems. Ravitch engages in deep listening and solutionary thought partnership to create the conditions for clients to imagine, learn, and drive adaptive cultures of excellence through a distinctly relational, targeted, evidence-based, and customized approach that enables leaders and organizations to:
- Develop and hone skills to drive adaptive leadership, teams, and organizations.
- Enact systemic sense-making for informed decision-making and innovation.
- Strategize and cultivate competencies for cultural and inclusive excellence.
- Build intrapersonal awareness and interpersonal communicative competence.
- Measure efficacy and impact of learning, skills development, and culture change.
Areas of Expertise
Ravitch’s work integrates human and organizational development, psychology, education, international development, anthropology, leadership and business into six strands: (1) adaptive leadership, leader learning agility, complex adaptive systems; (2) knowledge system integration, cross-cultural/sector/national coalition and capacity building; (3) evidence-based organizational development, assessment, and applied research teams; (4) international development via participatory, action, emergent design, and Indigenous research approaches; (5) holistic impact evaluation, impact-focused M&E, assets-based/appreciative assessment; and (6) sustainable organizational learning for inclusion and belonging.
Selected Client List 2020-2024
- World Health Organization (WHO)
- Wharton Executive Education
- Suntory Holdings
- Teva Pharmaceuticals
- Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation
- Hobbs & Towne International (HTI)
- LIMRA-LOMA
- L3 Harris
- Ministry of Education, Punjab, Pakistan
- National Ministry of Human Resource Development, India
- Centre for Asia Leadership
- Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai, India
- The Robert Bosch Stiftung, Stuttgart, Germany
- Anant National University, Ahmedabad, India
- American Association of Pediatric Dentists
- Dr. BMN College of Home Science, Mumbai, India
- Penn Medical School
- Philadelphia City Planning Commission
- C21 Media
- Accessible Pharmacy Services for the Blind
- Penn Educational Entrepreneurship Program
- Catalyst Coastal Leadership Collaborative
- DEI Ready
- Philadelphia School District Office of Innovation
- Penn Biomedical Graduate Studies
- Drexel University Policy, Organization, Leadership Division
- Drexel University Teaching, Learning, Curriculum Division
- Carlos Rosario International Public Charter School
- Lower Merion School District
- Cheltenham School District
- Wallingford-Swarthmore School District
- Milton Academy
- Ethical Culture Fieldston School
- The Philadelphia School
- The Shipley School
IV Optional Session Pre-/Post Readings
- Ravitch, S. & Herzog, L. (2023). Leadership Mindsets for Adaptive Change: The Flux 5. Routledge.
- Ravitch, S. (2021). Equitable teaching takes time and practice here are strategies to help: How to Prepare Yourself—and Your Students—to Discuss Race, Identity, and Equity. Harvard Business Publishing: Education.
- Ravitch, S. (2020). Why teaching through crisis requires a radical new mindset: Introducing Flux Pedagogy. Harvard Business Publishing: Education.
- Ravitch, S. (2020). Moving to healing-centered engagement: Reimagining trauma-informed leadership. TraumaVenture.
- Ravitch, S. (2009). Tapping into Research for Innovation. Chief Learning Officer. 8(11):44-47.
V Professional Biography
Sharon Ravitch, Ph.D., is a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. Ravitch earned two master’s degrees from Harvard University and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania.
Ravitch has published eight books: Leadership Mindsets for Adaptive Change: The Flux Five (2023); Flux Leadership: Real-Time Inquiry for Humanizing Educational Change (2022); Critical Leadership Praxis: Leading Educational and Social Change (2021); Applied Research for Sustainable Change: A Guide for Education Leaders (2019); Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological (2021/2016); Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research (2017/2012); School Counseling Principles: Diversity and Multiculturalism (2006); and Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships with Youth (1998). Her current project uses cases to examine systemic sensemaking for adaptive decision-making and cultural and inclusive excellence.
Ravitch is a global leadership and organizational diagnostics expert working with leaders, teams, and organizations to cultivate organizational sensemaking practices for cultural and inclusive excellence. She teaches and coaches executives across sectors and global contexts and designs and conducts leadership development with global leaders at Wharton Business School’s Executive Education hub. Ravitch’s approach to sustainable, assets-based organizational development and applied research is grounded in her decades-long experience serving as an advisor to global leaders and policymakers across government, business, non-profit, and non-governmental sectors to foster sustainable change at the individual, community, state, and national levels.
Ravitch is a GIAN Scholar of the Government of India. She is a Fulbright Fellow, a Perry World House Faculty Fellow, and a SCoPE Fellow at Anant National University in Ahmedabad, India. In 2021, she was faculty recipient of the Recognition of Outstanding Service Award to honor her dedication to providing a nurturing and supportive environment for students, staff, faculty, and alumni.