Michelle Buck is Clinical Professor of Management and Organizations at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.  She also serves as the School’s Director of Leadership Initiatives, designing and coordinating opportunities for personal leadership development to complement the School’s academic curriculum and provide an integrative student experience.  She has served as academic director of numerous Kellogg executive programs, including partnership programs with Fundacao dom Cabral in Brazil, programs for Latin American executives with Seminarium, as well as customized, company-specific programs.

Professor Buck teaches graduate and executive courses in leadership and negotiations.  Her work in personal leadership development focuses on the importance of self-reflection and the awareness of strengths, weaknesses, values, purpose, and aspirations as foundational elements of effective leadership and of management education.   Her teaching also addresses the role of leadership communication in motivating and engaging others, and leadership as a relationship and the dynamics of leading and following.  Professor Buck teaches Negotiations as a process of effective communication and creative problem solving, in which people are able to transform perceived conflict into new opportunities. 

In executive teaching, academic direction, and consulting, Professor Buck has worked with organizations including:  Banco de Mexico, Baxter International, Canadian Council for International Cooperation, Chicago Public Schools, Ernst & Young, Exelon, the FBI, Hewlett-Packard, HSBC Bank, Merck Frosst Canada, Mitsui & Co., Petro Canada, and YPO Latin America.  She has worked extensively in the contexts of private sector business, government, nonprofit executives, and leaders of family businesses, and has presented her work in North and Latin America, Europe, and Japan.

Her current interests include vitality and engagement as critical elements of effective leadership, courageous conversations, the use of arts-based learning in innovative leadership education, and projects emerging from travel to Rwanda, focused on transformational leadership and the pursuit of prosperity. 

Professor Buck previously was an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at McGill University, teaching in their MBA programs in Montreal and Tokyo.  She served as Module Director in the McGill-McConnell Program for National Voluntary Sector Leaders, an executive-level leadership development program for senior leaders of the non-profit sector in Canada, designed to facilitate leaders in creating a “more compassionate, sustainable society.”  She was awarded the McGill University Faculty of Management Distinguished Teaching Award in both 2001 and 1996.  She also previously taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Olin School of Business at Washington University, where she named Teacher of the Year in the MBA Program, earning their Reid Teaching Award, in 1995.  Professor Buck has a PhD and MA in Social Psychology from Princeton University, and a bachelor’s degree in Psychology from the University of Michigan. 

Professor Buck’s commitment in all of her work is to inspire and empower others to unleash new possibilities for themselves, for others and the communities in which they find themselves, and to contribute to management education’s preparation of authentic and transformational leaders.  In addition to her professional activities, Michelle enjoys dance, music, photography, and travel, with strong interests in Latin America and Africa.