Rate My Professor Lili Powell

Elizabeth A. Powell, professionally known as Lili Powell, is the Julie Logan Sands Associate Professor of Business Administration at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, holding a joint appointment as Associate Professor at the UVA School of Nursing. She directs the Compassionate Care Initiative as the Maria and John Kluge Endowed Chair since 2017. Powell's career at Darden began in 1994 as faculty in Management Communication, where she heads the Communication area and co-founded the Leading Mindfully executive education program. Prior to UVA, she served as Graduate Teaching Assistant and Research Assistant in Communication Studies at Northwestern University from 1989 to 1994. Her academic credentials include a Ph.D. in Communication Studies, specializing in Rhetoric and Performance Studies, from Northwestern University (1996); an M.A. in Rhetoric and Communication Studies from the University of Virginia (1986); and a B.A. with double majors in Psychology and Rhetoric and Communication Studies from the University of Virginia (1983), complemented by a Certificate in Business from the McIntire School of Commerce.

Powell's teaching spans MBA, EMBA, Executive Education, and inter-professional courses such as Leadership Communication, Communicating through Leadership Presence, At Your Best: Resilience, Communication and Leadership, and Leading with Presence in Healthcare for nurses, physicians, scientists, administrators, and students from nursing, medicine, business, law, and education. Her research specializations include mindful leadership, leadership presence, corporate communication, women in leadership, diversity, and leadership in healthcare. Key publications feature the co-authored book Women in Business: The Changing Face of Leadership (Praeger, 2007); “How to Recapture Leadership's Lost Moment” with Jeremy Hunter in Leader to Leader (2020); and “Showing Up with Grit and Grace: How to Lead Under Pressure as a Nurse Clinician and Leader” in Self-care for New and Student Nurses (Sigma Theta Tau International, 2021). Additional works encompass numerous case studies like “Disney’s America Theme Park: The Third Battle of Bull Run (A)” (2015) and “ABIOMED and the AbioCor Clinical Trials” (2006), with an forthcoming book Present: Leadership as Wise Practice. Honors include the Transformational Faculty Award from the Darden Executive MBA Program (2015), Top 10% All-time Downloads on SSRN (2017), and Education Membership in the Arthur W. Page Society (2017). Powell has consulted for the Federal Bureau of Investigation, KPMG, World Bank, United Technologies, and UVA School of Medicine, and presented at the Academy of Management, Mindful Leadership Summit, and National Communication Association, advancing mindful and compassionate leadership in business and healthcare.