The Practitioner-Scholar: The PennCLO Podcast

Dr. Sharon Ravitch is a professor of practice at the University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Education. Ravitch’s research, advising, teaching, and learning design integrate human and organizational development, psychology, anthropology, leadership, management, and organizational theory. Ravitch is a GIAN Scholar of the Government of India and Fulbright Specialist. Ravitch is a global leadership and organizational diagnostics expert working with leaders, teams, and organizations to cultivate organizational sensemaking practices for cultural excellence. She teaches and coaches executives across sectors and global contexts, designing and conducting leadership development with global leaders at the Wharton Business School’s Executive Education hub and the Yale School of Management. Ravitch’s approach to sustainable, assets-based organizational development and applied research is grounded in her decades-long experience serving as a senior advisor to global executives, leaders, and policymakers across government, corporate, non-profit, and non-governmental sectors working to drive sustainable change at the individual, community, state, and national levels. Dr. Ravitch has published nine books on leadership and qualitative methods including: Leaders as Architects of Change: Designing Organizations for Connection and Resilience in Times of Uncertainty (2026); Leadership Mindsets for Adaptive Change: The Flux 5 (2023); Flux Leadership: Real-Time Inquiry for Humanizing Educational Change (2022); Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological (2021/2016); Applied Research for Sustainable Change: A Guide for Education Leaders (2019); Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research (2017/2012); Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships with Youth (1998). Her two current books focus on humanizing AI in organizations and systems. Ravitch earned two master’s degrees from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology, mentored by Dr. Carol Gilligan, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in anthropology and education

Most organizations say they want leaders who can adapt amid uncertainty. Phillip Ellis actually knows how. For over two decades, he’s designed collaborations across disciplines, bringing stakeholders with competing incentives to the table to navigate problems no single perspective can solve. His work on systems of knowing has been featured by Brookings and New America, shaping how leaders think about what happens when different ways of knowing collide. Here’s the uncomfortable truth at the center of his work: the unconscious agreements you inherited are running the show. Most leaders have never examined them. Phillip has spent his career helping them start. He’s an adviser and Lecturer at Penn’s Executive Doctorate in Chief Learning Officer program, where he teaches senior leaders to rethink how organizations actually learn. His chapter in Leaders as Architects of Change, recently published by Routledge, distills that lesson into a framework leaders can use right now. Phillip holds an Ed.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, where his dissertation examined how epistemic thinking shapes a team’s capacity to collaborate on wicked problems. His next book, The Seeing Gap, co-written with Penn’s Dr. Sharon Ravitch, turns that lens on AI. Phillip and Sharon are writing it in the open on Substack, inviting readers to help shape it as it takes form. When he’s not writing or teaching, he’s on stages and in rooms with leadership teams, designing communities and immersive workshops that help organizations stop talking about adaptability and start practicing it.

Dr. Raghu Krishnamoorthy is a scholar-practitioner whose 40-year career spans corporate HR leadership and doctoral education. From 2022 to 2026 he was Senior Fellow and Director of the University of Pennsylvania's Chief Learning Officer (PennCLO) doctoral program. There he shaped the curriculum, led faculty and admissions, and chaired dissertations on leadership, learning, and the future of work. He has also taught at Wharton and been guest faculty at Harvard Business School, MIT Sloan, Yale, and Columbia. Before moving into academia, Raghu spent 25 years at General Electric, with HR roles in India, Hong Kong, London, and the United States. He was CHRO of GE Aviation, Chief Talent and Learning Officer at Crotonville, GE's leadership institute, and CHRO of GE Healthcare. He then became Chief Human Resources Officer of GE, leading HR for a $120 billion company with an HR organization of 4,000 people. Earlier in his career he held HR roles at American Express Bank, Modi-Xerox, and Escorts in India. His research looks at the future of work, the workplace, and the worker. His doctoral dissertation, on how leader behaviors affect employee engagement in virtual work, was awarded distinction, and his research won the Academy of Business Research's Best Paper Award in 2020. He writes often for Harvard Business Review and co-edited Leaders as Architects of Change (Routledge, 2026) with Sharon Ravitch. Raghu has advised and consulted with several organizations, including Boeing, Kraft Heinz, Tech Mahindra, Takeda, and the Tata Group. He sits on the board of IIM Ahmedabad's Ashank Desai Center for Learning and Organizational Development. He holds an Ed.D. and M.S.Ed. from Penn and an MBA from IIM Ahmedabad and was a Hubert H. Humphrey Fellow under the Fulbright program.