Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio

Dr. Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio is a behavioral and data scientist, as well as a lawyer. As a decision science, organizational behavior and gender specialist, she is advising some of the largest for-profit and non-profit organizations in the world. By enabling organizations to tap into insights from behavioral science and related fields, she helps senior leadership make better and inclusive decisions for themselves and their companies. She works with executives from Fortune 500 firms, governments, and top professional service firms, including Magic Circle law firms and AmLaw 100. She has developed several software and SAAS tools and owns several patents.

Dr. Paola Cecchi-Dimeglio is the faculty Chair of the Executive Leadership Research Initiative for Women and Minority (ELRIWMA) and a Senior Research Fellow at the Center for the Legal Profession and affiliated faculty at Harvard Kennedy School in the Women and Public Policy Program (WAPPP).

Next to her academic position, she heads up one of the top niche behavioral science consulting firms on improving decision making processes in organizations to level the playing field. People Culture Drive Consulting Group consists of high level consultants sharing an extensive knowledge of applying Behavioral Science to businesses and public policy challenges, with specific expertise in change management, research, sectorial experts, design, communication, and training. Thanks to People Culture Drive Consulting Group’s unique and multi-dimensional composition, we are able to create a dedicated ad hoc team tailored to the specific needs of each project.

Her book “Diversity Dividend” is forthcoming from MIT Press. This book is based on her work with some of the world’s largest organizations and governments and shows how gentle pushes (“nudges”) and a consistent organizational process allow firms to achieve the goal of having more women and minorities occupy leadership positions. Her work illustrates how organizations can become the architects of their employees, customers, and shareholders’ decision-making. This book details many examples of how applying cutting edge research helps uncover barriers to desired behaviors and create interventions to overcome them.

With over two decades of experience, working with some of the largest organizations in the world to change behavior at scale, she has designed and tested many behavioral interventions to effectively steer decision-making for inclusive organizations. She has advised and implemented major behavior change efforts across a range of public and private organizations, services and topics, to foster better decision making, inclusive leadership, and diverse teams.

Since joining Harvard, Dr. Cecchi Dimeglio has continued to advance the dialogue on diversifying the next generation of leaders. She has developed and taught courses in the interdisciplinary field of law, gender, and organizational behavior. She initiated executive courses and taught at executive programs at Harvard Law School, Harvard Kennedy School and programs organized by the MIT-Harvard Public Disputes Program and Tufts University. She has extensive experience with leadership development at all levels and functions, leveraging team potential, driving high-performance and innovation, as well as cultural, behavioral and systemic changes in organizations.

Her innovative and unique interdisciplinary work provides actionable strategies and mechanisms that help firms and service providers realize diversity and gender equity. Her work is published in top legal and management journals. Dr. Cecchi Dimeglio’s research relies heavily on big data and field experiments in organizations. She uses behavioral economics, behavioral science, big data and AI to design effective inclusive nudges that can be applied in organizations to increase diverse talent at all levels. She conducts research across business and legal sectors on how to effectively attract, retain, and promote diverse talent and leaders by designing and implementing inclusive “nudges” at critical decision points.

Dr. Cecchi Dimeglio chairs the committee on Law and Gender for the UN Global Compact, PRME initiative (WGGE). She is a member of the Advisory Council of the American Bar Association, advising the President of the American Bar Association on diversity challenges. She was nominated as Expert-Coordinator for several projects on dispute resolution, lawyers, and gender that were funded by the EU and the UN.

She was awarded several prestigious prizes from federal agencies, on her behavioral and data visualization tools. She is an award-winning author and has published several books and articles on data analytics and behavioral science, leadership, the legal profession, and gender and diversity in leading peer reviews and top management and legal journals.

Her research has been featured in Business Insider, Harvard Business Review (HBR), The American Lawyer, Bloomberg Law and Thomson Reuters Legal. She is also a monthly columnist for the Legal Executive Institute at Thomson Reuters where she discusses how professional service firms and law firms can navigate a dramatically changing legal environment using data analytics and behavioral science.