Lite J. Nartey

Lite J. Nartey is Affiliate Professor of Strategy at INSEAD, based in Abu Dhabi, and Academic Director of the INSEAD Africa Initiative. An award-winning strategy scholar, executive educator, advisor and board director, she studies and teaches how leaders and organisations develop and execute strategy, create value and lead transformation in complex markets and institutional environments.

Professor Nartey’s research examines how firms formulate and execute strategy when business outcomes depend not only on markets and competitors, but also on governments, communities, investors, civil society and other stakeholders beyond the firm’s direct control. Her work spans stakeholder strategy and engagement, nonmarket strategy and international business, exploring how relationships among these actors shape competitive advantage, organisational performance and societal impact.

Her research is grounded in complex industries and markets, including energy and extractives, telecommunications, financial services and digital finance, particularly in emerging and growth economies. These settings provide a powerful context for understanding how firms navigate institutional complexity, competing stakeholder demands, uncertainty and rapid market change. Professor Nartey draws broader lessons from these environments for leaders and organisations operating across industries and geographies where strategy increasingly requires managing interdependence and mobilising actors beyond traditional organisational boundaries.

Her research has been published in leading academic journals including Academy of Management Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategy Science and the Journal of Business Ethics. Her work has received numerous international awards and honours, including the Ralph Gomory Best Industry Studies Paper Award and awards from the Strategic Management Society recognising both scholarly contribution and practical implications.

Professor Nartey teaches senior executives and board members across INSEAD’s Executive Education programmes, alongside MBA participants in INSEAD’s degree programmes. Her teaching spans the breadth of strategy—from competitive advantage, corporate and international strategy to strategic thinking and strategy execution—as well as strategy under complexity and uncertainty, leadership in complex environments, stakeholder and ecosystem strategy, transformation and change, and board leadership and governance.

Her teaching is highly experiential, combining rigorous research with practical frameworks, business simulations, immersive and VR-enabled learning, live cases and participants’ own strategic challenges. These approaches enable leaders to experience the choices, tensions and consequences involved in making strategic decisions, building alignment and coalitions, navigating stakeholder ecosystems and executing strategy under conditions of uncertainty and complexity.

Professor Nartey works with senior executives, leadership teams and boards across sectors including energy and the energy transition, financial services and digital finance, telecommunications, infrastructure and logistics, industrials and technology. Alongside her academic and Executive Education work, she advises organisations and senior leaders on strategy, stakeholder engagement and transformation, and serves in board and advisory roles.

Increasingly, her work addresses the strategic and leadership implications of artificial intelligence and technological transformation, alongside geopolitical change, sustainability pressures and evolving relationships among business, government and society. Her focus is on how leaders and organisations build the capabilities required to navigate these shifts and translate strategic ambition into execution.

As Academic Director of the INSEAD Africa Initiative, Professor Nartey leads efforts to deepen INSEAD’s engagement with African leadership, enterprise and knowledge and to strengthen connections between Africa and the wider global economy. Based in Abu Dhabi, she has a particular interest in the growing strategic and economic relationships connecting Africa with the Gulf and Asia.

Before entering academia, Professor Nartey worked in international development and across the private, public and non-profit sectors, including with the International Finance Corporation. She received her PhD and MSc in Management from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and her MPA in Public and Non-profit Management and Policy, with a focus on International Development, from New York University’s Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. Before joining INSEAD, she was on the faculty of the Darla Moore School of Business at the University of South Carolina.