David Ricketts

Innovation Fellow, Scholar and Professor, CXO Partner, Cutting-edge innovator, Award Winning Scientist

Dr. David S. Ricketts received his PhD from Harvard University and has held appointments at Carnegie Mellon University, Harvard University, MIT and North Carolina State University. He was the inaugural Innovation Science Fellow in the Technology and Entrepreneurship Center in the School of Engineering and Applied Science. For the past decade Dr. Ricketts has helped shape the Innovation in Science and Technology courses in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences as well as found the civic innovation program. He teaches and speaks regularly on innovation and business strategy. He focuses on the role of the individual innovator and helps senior leaders develop new innovators and systemic innovation in their companies.

In addition to Dr. Ricketts' innovation research, he is an award-winning scientist and engineer whose innovations have been featured by Popular Science, Smithsonian, NBC News, CBS News, Fox News, ESPN, and many other science news outlets. He is the recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award and the U.S. Defense Advanced Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Investigator Award. His work has appeared twice in Nature, as well as numerous IEEE publications, including a feature article in the Proceedings of the IEEE. His scientific research focuses on the physical limitations of circuits and systems and how to address them through new materials, circuits and devices.

David L. Ager

Senior Lecturer and Managing Director, Harvard Business School, Executive Education

David Ager is a Senior Lecturer in Executive Education.  He engages CEOs, CHROs, and their teams to design and deliver customized executive development experiences for executive, senior and high potential leaders.  The companies hail from diverse sectors including energy, fast moving consumer goods, quick service food, finance, government, media, automotive, retail, gems and jewelry, spirits and luxury goods.  His teaching addresses a broad set of topics within leadership development and organizational behavior.

David co-chairs Families in Business and Building a Legacy: Family Office Wealth Management, two Harvard Business School executive education programs focused on Governance of the Family Enterprise.

Since 2013 David has co-chaired the GIA Global Leadership Program, which brings together executive and decision-makers who constitute industry leadership, representing the full scope of activity and geography of the global gem and jewelry industry.   David also chairs Harvard Business School’s first two executive development programs intended for Native American, First Nations, Aboriginal and Indigenous Leaders. The first of these programs, Leading People and Investing to Build Sustainable Communities, was launched in 2017.  David worked closely with AFOA, NAFOA, NCAI, and HUNAP to design this program, which is intended to explore how governance practices can shape the management of investments (e.g. sovereign wealth funds) with a longer-term view toward building sustainable communities.  The second program focuses on leading high performing Aboriginal Financial Institutions.  These organizations provide capital to finance Aboriginal small and medium-sized enterprises with the goal to increase social and economic self-reliance and sustainability for Indigenous people.

From 2004 to 2012 Professor Ager served as a faculty member and the director of undergraduate studies in the Sociology Department at Harvard University.  One of the first faculty to introduce the case method of learning to Harvard College, Ager offered courses on leadership, organizational sociology, and field research methods.  In 2008 he introduced the first undergraduate course on Social Entrepreneurship at Harvard College with an emphasis on using entrepreneurial approaches to create for-profit, not-for-profit, and hybrid ventures to address social problems and bring about social change.

In 2004 Ager earned a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, a joint degree granted by Harvard Business School and Harvard's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.   He also earned an Honors B.Sc. in Economics and Human Biology from the University of Toronto, an MBA from the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario and a Master's degree in Sociology from Harvard University.  In 2010 Harvard University awarded Ager the Levenson Memorial Teaching Prize for excellence in teaching and dedication to undergraduate education.  In 2011 he was awarded the Phi Beta Kappa Prize for excellence in teaching at Harvard University by the Alpha-Iota of Massachusetts Phi Beta Kappa chapter.  Ager sits on the board of MJM Yachts and is an advisor to several student organizations at Harvard College.

Verne Harnish

Founder and CEO of Scaling Up

Verne Harnish is founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), with over 16,000 members worldwide, and chaired for fifteen years EO’s premiere CEO program held at MIT, a program in which he still teaches today.

Founder and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching company with over 200 partners on six continents, Verne has spent the past four decades helping companies scaleup.

He’s the author of the bestseller Mastering the Rockefeller Habits; authored The Greatest Business Decisions of All Times," for which Jim Collins wrote the foreword; and wrote Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) which has been translated into 22 languages and has won eight major international book awards including the prestigious International Book Award for Best General Business book. His latest book, Scaling Up Compensation, rocketed to the #1 HR book on Amazon.

Verne also chairs the annual ScaleUp Summits and serves on several boards including vice chair of The Riordan Clinic; co-founder and chair of Geoversity; and board member of the social venture Million Dollar Women. A private investor in many scaleups, Verne enjoys piano, tennis, and magic as a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.