Pramodita (Dita) Sharma, PhD, (University of Calgary) is the Daniel Clark Sanders Chair and professor of Family Business at the Grossman School of Business, University of Vermont. She is a visiting professor at the Kellogg School of Management’s Center for Family Enterprises, Northwestern University. She has also been a visiting scholar at Babson College where she served as the academic director of the Global Successful Transgenerational Entrepreneurship Practices (STEP) project for five years. Dita holds honorary doctorates from the Jönköping University in Sweden and the University of Witten/ Herdecke in Germany. 

Dr. Sharma’s research on succession processes, governance, innovation, next-generation commitment, and entrepreneurial leadership in family enterprises has been honored with several international awards. She is amongst the most frequently cited scholars in family business About the Authors 223 studies. In addition to nine coauthored books, she has published over fifty scholarly articles and book chapters on family business studies. Her book on entrepreneurial family firms (with Hoy) is being used in family business courses around the world and has been translated into Mandarin. And the SAGE Handbook of Family Business (with Melin and Nordqvist) is described as a “must read” and “critical resource for all students and scholars of family business.” 

Sharma is active in leadership and advisory roles in a number of professional associations. She serves as the editor of Family Business Review, a highly ranked journal of business. With Mark Green, she co-founded Family Enterprise Research Conference in 2005. This annual conference attracts leading family business scholars from around the world. In 2013 she launched the Global Family Enterprise Case Competition. 

Pramodita received the prestigious Barbara Hollander award at the twenty-fifth anniversary conference of the Family Firm Institute and received the Life Time Influence and Impact award at the 2015 Family Enterprise Research Conference. 

Sharma maintains close links with the business community. Supported by various private and government agencies, her research is well received both in academic and practitioner outlets. She is a frequent speaker at gatherings of family business leaders around the world. This interaction enables her to share insights from evidence based research with practitioners while ensuring that her research remains focused on issues of significant importance to the family business community. Experiences and close interactions with her own family’s enterprises help keep her professional work rooted into the realties and complex dynamics of these fascinating enterprises that dominate the economic and societal landscape around the world.