RAKESH KHURANA

Rakesh Khurana is an Advisor to Xfund. He is the Marvin Bower Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business School and Professor of Sociology in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, where he teaches undergraduate, MBA, and Ph.D. courses on organizational behavior, leadership, bureaucracy, and the sociology of organizations. His research explores the sociology of institutions and elites. His current work examines how globalization has reshaped the composition and values of the American business elite and why bureaucracy continues to proliferate in our institutions and organizations. Khurana has written extensively on the CEO labor market, corporate governance, and the social histories of business education and selective U.S. universities. He also writes extensively on the importance of the independence of American universities and their contributions to democratic society, including the principles of academic freedom, research autonomy, self-governance, and accreditation. His work has been widely cited in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, and other leading publications.

From 1998 to 2000, Khurana taught at MIT’s Sloan School of management. He joined Harvard Business School’s faculty in 2000. From 2014 to 2025, Khurana served as Dean of Harvard College, where his administration revitalized the undergraduate academic program, modernized student services, and strengthened opportunities in the arts and public service. In 2020, he launched the Intellectual Vitality initiative to promote open discourse and deeper academic engagement, restructured the College’s student service infrastructure to better support student needs, and significantly expanded access to creative and civic learning experiences. A strong advocate for independent thinking and for learning across diverse perspectives and points of view, he believes that the zip code one is born into should not determine one’s life chances, and he championed the recruitment of students from socially and economically diverse backgrounds. He also deepened alumni and donor engagement, securing vital support during periods of financial and reputational challenge. In hindsight, he often jokes that being a dean at Harvard is a bit like being a protagonist in a novel you didn’t write—surrounded by interesting characters you can’t help but admire and plot twists you never saw coming.

Khurana has received numerous scholarly honors and is the author of several influential books and articles that examine how leaders are selected and socialized, and how institutions shape their values and behavior. He received his S.B from Cornell University and A.M. and Ph.D. from Harvard.