Professional Biography
Dr. Sharon M. Ravitch is a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She is Principal Investigator of Semillas Digitales, a school-based education program in the coffee-producing regions of Nicaragua that cultivates a holistic model of educational innovation focused on pedagogical and curricular enrichment, intensive inquiry-based teacher professional development, technology integration, digital literacy and community partnership guided by active collaboration, mutual capacity building, and participatory engagement.
Dr. Ravitch has published eight books: Leadership Mindsets for Adaptive Change: The Flux 5 (with Liza Herzog, Routledge, 2023); Flux Leadership: Real-Time Inquiry for Humanizing Educational Change (with Chloe Kannan, Teachers College Press, 2022); Critical Leadership Praxis: Leading Educational and Social Change (with Katie Pak, Teachers College Press, 2021); Applied Research for Sustainable Change: A Guide for Education Leaders (with Nicole Carl, Harvard Education Press, 2019); Qualitative Research: Bridging the Conceptual, Theoretical, and Methodological (with Nicole Carl, Sage, 2016/2021); Reason and Rigor: How Conceptual Frameworks Guide Research (with Matthew Riggan, Sage, 2012/2017); School Counseling Principles: Diversity and Multiculturalism (American School Counselor Association Press, 2006); and Matters of Interpretation: Reciprocal Transformation in Therapeutic and Developmental Relationships with Youth (with Michael Nakkula, Jossey-Bass, 1998). Ravitch is currently completing the book Um Kulthumism: Arab American Women, Identity, and Intersectionality (with Dr. Reima Shakeir).
Dr. Ravitch is a GIAN Scholar of the Government of India and a Perry World House Faculty Fellow. She was recently awarded the SCoPE Fellowship in Social Impact Design at Anant National University in Ahmedabad, India. In 2021, she was selected as a faculty recipient of the Recognition of Outstanding Service Award to honor her dedication to providing a nurturing and supportive environment for students, staff, and faculty.
Ravitch earned two master’s degrees from Harvard University in Human Development and Psychology and Education, mentored by Dr. Carol Gilligan, and a doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania in an interdisciplinary program that integrates across the fields of anthropology and education.
Research Interests and Current Projects
Ravitch is a global leadership and organizational diagnostics expert working with leaders, teams, and organizations to cultivate organizational sensemaking practices for cultural and inclusive excellence. She teaches and coaches executives across sectors and global contexts. She designs and conducts leadership development with global leaders at Wharton Business School’s Executive Education hub. Ravitch’s approach to sustainable, assets-based organizational development and applied research is grounded in her decades-long experience serving as a collaborator with and advisor to global leaders and policymakers across government, business, non-profit, and non-governmental sectors working to foster equitable change at the individual, community, state, and national levels around the globe.
Dr. Ravitch’s scholarship spans and integrates education, international development, anthropology, human and organizational development, psychology, leadership, and business and has five strands: (1) adaptive leadership, leader learning agility, inquiry, and development in complex adaptive systems; (2) sustainable professional, team, and organizational learning and growth for equity and belonging; (3) practitioner learning, inquiry, and professional development, cultivating communities of practice and applied research teams; (4) international development research via participatory, action, and applied ethnographic approaches; and (5) participatory community-based research, holistic evaluation, impact M&E, and assets-based assessment.
Ravitch’s U.S.-based leader and organizational development work focuses on Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion (DEI) and Flux Leadership with non-governmental organizations, educational leaders and teacher teams, corporate leaders and teams, boards, and higher education programs and faculties. Focal areas include equity, implicit bias, racial literacy and navigating identity-based stress, brave space norm development, equity-focused theories of action, culturally responsive leadership approaches, emergent design professional development, transformational and crisis leadership, and healing-centered engagement.
