Jane Wei-Skillern is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Social Sector Leadership at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley. Previously, she has served on the faculty at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, Harvard Business School (HBS), and London Business School. She has studied and published extensively on nonprofit networks for more than two decades. She has also taught courses on social entrepreneurship, nonprofit strategy, and network leadership to MBAs and executives, and is the author and coauthor of dozens of publications, including journal articles and HBS and UC Berkeley Haas School of Business case studies.

Her research on network leadership examines how social impact leaders, whether philanthropists, nonprofit executives or staff, that focus less on building their own institutions and instead invest to build trust based networks and a strong relational foundation in their communities can achieve dramatic gains in mission impact. Four network principles of success that she has learned from studying leading edge nonprofit networks are:

1. Mission before Organization
2. Trust not Control
3. Humility not Brand
4. Constellations not Stars

Leaders that demonstrate these principles in their collaborative work are better able to build robust, enduring networks. These networks generate social impact more efficiently, effectively, and sustainably. This research can be found at newnetworkleader.org.

For the past several years, Jane has taken a leave from teaching in the MBA classroom to focus on supporting social impact leaders in the field to grow their impact through networks. She is frequently invited to present keynote speeches, webinars, and workshops to share her research on network leadership and to facilitate the development of trust based collaborations within organizations and communities.

Specialties: social entrepreneurship, philanthropy, nonprofit strategy, leadership and management of social enterprises, nonprofit growth and management of multi-site nonprofits, nonprofit networks, network leadership.

More information about Jane’s research and teaching can be found at: newnetworkleader.org and https://haas.berkeley.edu/cssl/faculty/si-fellows-visiting-scholars/Jane W