SYLVIA ANN HEWLETT

Sylvia Ann Hewlett is an economist and the CEO of Hewlett Consulting. She is also the founder and Chair Emeritus of the Center for Talent Innovation. In her scholarship and consultancy work Hewlett has focused on the “value of difference” and the challenges and oportunities faced by women, people of color, LGBT employees and other previously excluded groups.  She has forged a signature style of enquiry which blends hard data and rigorous analysis with in-depth story-telling and concrete solutions. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Century Association.

Hewlett is the author of 17 Harvard Business Review articles and 16 critically acclaimed books, including When the Bough Breaks (winner of a Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Book Award); Off- Ramps and On-Ramps; Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets; Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor (an Audible best seller); Executive Presence (an Amazon “Best Book of the Month,”), and The Sponsor Effect (Financial Times “Business Book Of The Month.”) She has been recognized as the Most Influential International Thinker by HR magazine and honored by Google with its Global Diversity Award.

Hewlett is a frequent speaker on the international stage. She has presented at Davos, keynoted the FT conference on “Women at the Top” and spoken at the Economist’s “Innovation Summit.” She has appeared on 60 Minutes, Panorama, The Today Show, Morning Joe and The View —and has been lampooned on Saturday Night Live. Her writings have appeared in the New York Times, Financial Times, The Washington Post, and Wall Street Journal, and she’s a featured blogger on the HBR Blog Network and an Influencer on LinkedIn. In 2017 she became an external member of the Fox News Workplace Professionalism and Inclusion Council as this company sought to transform its leadership culture.

Hewlett has taught at Cambridge, Columbia, and Princeton universities and has held fellowships at the Institute for Public Policy Research in London and the Center for the Study of Values in Public Life at Harvard. A graduate of Cambridge University, she won a Kennedy Fellowship to Harvard University. Hewlett earned her PhD in economics at London University. Currently based in New York City, Hewlett grew up in Ebbw Vale – a coal mining community in South Wales.