Erika Hayes James

Current Professor of Business Administration at the Darden Business School, University of Virginia, Dr. Erika Hayes James continues to conduct research in the areas of crisis leadership and women in leadership.  Dr. James joined the Darden faculty in 2001. In addition to teaching, she pioneered a new position at Darden—Associate Dean of Diversity, in order to create a more diverse and inclusive environment for faculty, staff, and students. Prior to this appointment she served on the faculty at the Freeman School of Business at Tulane University and the Goizueta Business School at Emory University, and was a recent visiting professor at the Harvard Business School.

In January 2012 Erika became the new owner and President of the Institute for Crisis Management. Founded in 1990, The Institute for Crisis Management has been at the forefront of helping organizations, government agencies, and non-profits with crisis communication planning, and execution.  Now, Erika James’s vision is to expand the scope of the crisis management offerings to include consulting on all phases of a crisis: before, during, and after.

She has published in several leading academic journals including Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Academy of Management Journal. (Executive summaries of her published journal articles or copies of the full articles are available upon request.) Dr. James’s research on crisis leadership culminated in her new book, Leading Under Pressure: From Surviving to Thriving Before, During, and After a Crisis (Taylor & Francis, 2010).

Erika has helped executives lead their organizations by developing skills in the following areas:

•      Women in leadership    
•      Decision-making under pressure
•      Managing, learning from, and seizing opportunity from crisis
•      Managing the change process after a crisis
•      Workplace diversity
•      Building trust in the workplace

Her corporate clients include Fortune 500 companies such as Intel, Freddie Mac, Johnson & Johnson, Bayer Pharmaceuticals, Merrill Lynch, GE, and Farmers Insurance. She has also helped numerous companies unique to their respective communities, such as Martha Jefferson Hospital in Charlottesville, VA, and Clark Construction, in Bethesda, MD.

In 2010 Erika launched a new Darden Executive Education open enrollment class called "Women Emerging in Leadership" which is given at the Darden school in Charlottesville, Virginia, and each May in Dubai. And in November 2012 Dr. James was named the new Senior Associate Dean for the Darden Executive Education program, whose faculty has been named #1 by Financial Times magazine multiple times.

Erika has not only inspired employees at the corporate level, but professional and academic members of numerous national associations on topics including:

• Professional Risk Managers' International Association (PRMIA) 10th Anniversary Global Risk Conference, addressing key issues and risks in the international markets and financial services, 2012
• Rebuilding Trust in the Finance Industry, Association for Financial Professionals, Annual Conference, 2010
• Leading Under Pressure, Diversity MBA magazine 2010 Awards Gala and Leadership Forum
• Leading Positively: Individual Differences that Influence the Ability to See Crisis as Opportunity, Academy of Management Annual Meeting, 2008
• Black Women Rising: State of Affairs of Black Female Corporate Directors,  Executive Leadership Council, Black Women on Wall Street Summit, Keynote Presenter
• A Woman’s Worth: Composition of Compensation Packages for Male and Female Top Executives, Strategic Management Society, 2007
• Crisis as Opportunity: Toward a Reconceptualization of Crisis Management, Academy of Management, 2006
• Decision Making Under Pressure,  Institute for Management Studies, 2006