Faculty Bio

Padmakumar Nair, Ph. D.
School of Management
University of Texas at Dallas

Padmakumar Nair is the Academic Director of the Leadership Center and a Senior Lecturer, at the UTD School of Management. Five years ago, after a long career in engineering research, he started teaching in the areas of global leadership, strategic management, entrepreneurial leadership, managing e-learning and e-business, managing innovation and marketing of high technology products.

According to Dr. Nair the most important aspect of any leadership education is its ability to help participants internalize certain paradoxical behaviors. He says, “Leadership development is not always about strengthening your strengths. It is also about weakening some of your strengths. Philosophically, weakening some of the strengths can be a prerequisite for effective learning and changing one's behavior.”

Dr. Nair specializes in global leadership and has taught in the United States, Japan and in the Netherlands. He thinks, with time, every leadership curriculum will reflect a considerable amount of global and cultural issues. He has a Ph.D. from the University of Twente, the Netherlands and a D.Sc. from the University of Tokyo. He has published more than 40 papers in internationally recognized journals and has also been invited to speak at several international venues.

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