Lara Liboni

Lara is an Associate Professor at Ivey Business School, Western University, Canada. She holds a joint appointment at the University of Sao Paulo, Brazil with a fellowship research position at the Bertalanffy Center in Austria. Her expertise is in strategy and sustainability, and her investigation sheds light on how collaborative systemic change can shape strategy toward innovation and sustainability. She has been publishing cutting-edge research in several highly cited journals and conferences.

Lara has been working to integrate systems thinking and sustainability in management education to develop responsible leaders. She is the author of the book “Systems Thinking and Systems Theory for Management” which addresses this research topic in depth. She has supervised several Ph.D. theses and has designed and coordinated numerous academic and executive programs. 

In Brazil, Lara founded the Center for Innovation, Systems and Sustainability (CISS) and has worked to improve management research in Latin America. She is the executive editor of the Latin American Journal of Management for Sustainable Development and is the founder of the Latin American Society for Systems and Sustainability.

Meanwhile, she was a consultant to several firms and organizations, such as PWC, UNICA(Brazilian Sugarcane Industry and Bioenergy Association) and UNCTAD-UN (United Nations Conference on Trade and Development). She has also worked with non-profit organizations, such as Carolinian Canada, PICE Entrepreneurship and Lar de Euripedes Foundation.

With a consolidated academic career and a consultancy background, Lara has sat on different private board councils, developing important bonds between research and practice in strategic sectors, such as IT and agri-food. She has coordinated several cross-sector projects to promote systemic change and innovative strategies toward sustainability.