Professional Biography
Dr. Sharon M. Ravitch is a Professor of Practice at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education. She is a GIAN Scholar of the Government of India and a SCoPE Fellow in Social Impact Design at Anant National University in Ahmedabad, working with Indigenous leaders across India to learn from and position Tribal knowledge and practice systems for a diffusion of sustainable climate and livelihood innovations. Ravitch is a founding member of the Eighth Fire Collective, an Indigenous-led participatory collective working to develop an online Indigenous knowledge, practice, and story exchange platform designed as an entrepreneurial learning ecosystem. The goal of the platform is to connect businesses looking to adopt Indigenous Earth knowledge to well-trained Tribal teams of knowledge keepers, entrepreneurs, Earth protection certifiers, and intergenerational storytellers to cultivate, innovate, and share sustainable climate and livelihood solutions.
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 Reima Shakeir).
Ravitch is Principal Investigator of Semillas Digitales, a school- and community-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 methods of engagement and evaluation.
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. 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.
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, designing and conducting 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 senior advisor to global leaders and policymakers across government, corporate, non-profit, and non-governmental sectors who are working to foster equitable and sustainable change at the individual, community, state, and national levels.
Ravitch’s work integrates human and organizational development, psychology, education, international development, anthropology, leadership, and business into six strands: (1) adaptive leadership, leader learning agility, complex adaptive systems; (2) knowledge system integration, cross-cultural/sector/national coalition and capacity building; (3) evidence-based organizational development, assessment, and applied research teams; (4) international development via participatory, action, emergent design, and Indigenous research approaches; (5) holistic impact evaluation, impact-focused M&E, assets-based/appreciative assessment; and (6) sustainable organizational learning for humanization, inclusion, and belonging.
Ravitch’s U.S.-based leader and organizational development work focuses on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, & Belonging (DEIB) and adaptive leadership with government leaders, non-governmental organizations, educational leaders and teams, corporate leaders and teams, boards, and higher education programs and faculties. Focal areas include: systemic sensemaking for cultural and inclusive excellence; equity-focused leader, team, and organizational learning; culturally responsive leadership, policies, and organizations; unconscious bias and invisible logics in culture and decision-making; navigating workplace identity-based stress; institutional storytelling for constructive dialogue; and healing-centered leadership and humanizing organizations.
Ravitch’s international work in applied research, research design, and methodology focuses on: design thinking and emergent design research; holistic impact evaluation/assessment/M&E; workplace research design, implementation, and analysis; leader, systems, organizational, and practitioner research; evidence-based learning and professional development; multimodal storytelling and data repositories (data sovereignty); organizational storytelling and rapid-cycle inquiry; bridging Western and Indigenous epistemologies, designs, and methodologies; participatory action research in organizations/communities; and trauma-informed/healing-centered organizational/community research.
