Lisa Dragoni
Unlocking Leadership

From a young age, Lisa Dragoni has been fascinated by the life experiences of others. That interest led her down the path of examining how people learn and grow into organizational leaders.

“I’ve always had that curiosity about humans—how we’re wired and the things that we learn and develop over time,” she recalls. “When I was an undergraduate, I studied business, and I became really fascinated by organizational behavior—learning about motivation, theories of leadership and theories of teams. I just remember thinking, ‘this is a really cool area.’”

After earning her master’s in women’s studies and public policy, Dragoni began working as a consultant, helping organizations solve problems that were often rooted in human behavior and interpersonal interactions. As she helped companies navigate these challenges, Dragoni began to realize the work she was conducting might be leading her down a different path.

“I found myself asking typical academic kinds of questions: How do we know this is the best solution? And in this interesting context, why do we think what we’ve recommended in the past would be advisable here? Those are questions that academics ask all the time,” she says.

So Dragoni enrolled at the University of Maryland, pursuing her PhD in business, and specializing in organizational behavior. Upon graduation, she taught undergraduate and graduate students at Maryland, the University of Iowa, and Cornell University before coming to Wake Forest in 2015.

During her tenure at Wake, Dragoni has exemplified the teacher-scholar model, pursuing a passion for research and teaching that awakened during her PhD studies.

“When I joined the program at Maryland, it was a very formative time because I realized that I really loved the research, and I also really loved teaching,” she remembers. “There have been times throughout my career that I have considered going back into practice, but for a variety of reasons I’ve stayed in academia. One of the biggest reasons is I have the luxury of learning along with my students and my colleagues—that has been a great source of motivation and fulfillment for me.”

Dragoni’s research focuses on leadership development within the framework of organizational behavior. Her work looks at what helps leaders learn and become more effective, and how organizations can support that growth.

“We’re focused on understanding what equips a particular individual to lead better, while also understanding how we equip an organization or team to have leading and following happening in a way where there’s clarity of direction alignment and great levels of motivation.”

Dragoni is currently working in partnership with the United States Military Academy at West Point to better understand how the venerable military institution has been able to cultivate such a longstanding tradition of building leadership in our future military leaders, then applying that insight to business scenarios.

“At West Point, these teams are nimble and they’re able to adjust quickly to changing and unforeseen circumstances, sometimes in the most dire situations,” she observes. “We found that the teams that were the most adaptive were led by leaders who could seamlessly and fluidly change across three major goals—learning, execution and managing risk.”

The insights gleaned from that research have already made it into Dragoni’s classroom, where she gives students a taste of her findings, showing them how they can apply these principles to their own careers in business. At West Point, that work has now been incorporated into their curriculum as well.

Dragoni points out that the freedom she’s afforded at Wake, to pursue research and work with colleagues at other institutions, has helped her grow not only as a scholar, but also as a teacher guiding the next generation of business leaders.

“Wake is very special. It’s a supportive place full of warm people, but they’re also capable, inquisitive people who want to do exceptional work. I’ve found in my career that usually places are one or the other, but here at Wake, we’re both.”