Barbara Perry

Barbara Perry, Ph.D., is a cultural anthropologist who has advised the tribes we call organizations for 50 years. Her work, rooted in the intersection of culture, organizational learning, and hope, has been applied to a wide variety of organizational challenges from innovation to large scale systemic transformation.

She pioneered the use of team-based ethnographic methods to foster global innovation. Her book, (with Harry Hutson) “ Putting Hope to Work,” the first book to explore hope as a leadership principle, was named by Harvard Business Review as one of twenty most innovative ideas of the year in 2007. Barbara is a passionate teacher, helping leaders step back to read and appreciate context, understand the day to day implications of their behavior, and make choices that build collaborative, aligned, hopeful and energized learning communities.