The Practitioner-Scholar: The PennCLO Podcast

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.