Frances Frei

Frances Frei is a Harvard Business School professor and one of today’s most influential voices on trust, leadership, and culture in high-performing organisations. Known for her radical candor, bold ideas, and practical frameworks, Frei helps companies move fast without breaking the people inside them.

With over 25 years of teaching and research at Harvard, Frances Frei has advised leaders at some of the world’s most ambitious companies, including Uber, Walmart, Riot Games, and ServiceNow. In 2017, she took a sabbatical from Harvard to become Uber’s first Senior Vice President of Leadership and Strategy. At Uber, Frei helped steer the company through a turbulent cultural transformation. Her work focused on rebuilding trust, articulating strategy, and scaling leadership at every level. These efforts that have since shaped how the company thinks about growth, ethics, and inclusion.

Frances Frei’s research centers on how leaders can design systems where both individuals and organisations thrive. She believes that leadership isn’t about self-improvement but how effectively you empower others. This philosophy is captured in her trio of bestselling books, Uncommon Service, Unleashed, and Move Fast & Fix Things. The books each offer battle-tested strategies for customer obsession, sustainable empowerment, and leading through urgency without compromising trust.

Frei is also the co-host of TED’s popular podcast Fixable, where she and collaborator Anne Morriss take on real workplace dilemmas and help solve them in under 30 minutes. The show proves that even the most entrenched organisational problem can be fixed when tackled with clarity, trust, and speed. Frances Frei’s viral TED Talk, How to Build (and Rebuild) Trust, has been viewed by millions and used by leaders around the world as a blueprint for restoring credibility.