Rakesh Khurana (born November 22, 1967) is an Indian-American educator.

He is a Professor
of Sociology at Harvard University, Professor of Leadership Development at Harvard Business
School and the Dean of Harvard College.[1][2]

Early life and education[edit]

Khurana was born in India and was raised in Queens, New York.[3] He received his bachelor's
degree in industrial relations from Cornell,[1] his M.A. in sociology from Harvard, and his PhD in
organizational behavior through a joint program between the Harvard Faculty of Arts and
Sciences and Harvard Business School in 1998.[1]

Career[edit]
Khurana is a founding team member of Cambridge Technology Partners and from 1998 to 2000
he taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[1] Khurana is the author of the
book, Searching for a Corporate Savior: The Irrational Quest for Charismatic CEOs and related
academic and managerial articles on the pitfalls of charismatic leadership.[citation needed] In 2007 he
published his second book From Higher Aims to Hired Hands: The Social Transformation of
American Business Schools and the Unfulfilled Promise of Management as a
Profession (Princeton University Press).[4] The book received the Max Weber prize from the
American Sociological Association's Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section and was the
Winner of the 2009 Gold Medal Axiom Business Book Award in Career, Jenkins Group, Inc. and
the Winner of the 2007 Best Professional/Scholarly Publishing Book in Business, Finance and
Management, Association of American Publishers and the Finalist for the George R. Terry Award
from the Academy of Management.[citation needed]
He is the co-editor of the Handbook of Leadership Theory and Practice (2010), published
by Harvard Business School Press[5] and the Handbook for Teaching Leadership: Knowing,
Doing and Being, (2012), published by SAGE Publications.[6]
In March 2010,[7] Khurana and his wife, Stephanie Khurana, were named master and co-master
of Cabot House. The pair remained in these roles, though the specific title was changed from
"master" to "faculty dean," until 2020.[8]