Don Hambrick is the Smeal Chaired Professor of Management, Smeal College of Business Administration, at The Pennsylvania State University. He is also Samuel Bronfman Professor Emeritus of Columbia University's Graduate School of Business. He holds degrees from the University of Colorado (B.S.), Harvard University (M.B.A.), and The Pennsylvania State University (Ph.D.).

An internationally recognized scholar in the field of top management, he is the author of numerous articles, chapters, and books on the topics of strategy formulation, strategy implementation, executive staffing and incentives, and the composition and processes of top management teams. His recent book, Navigating Change: How CEOs, Top Teams, and Boards Steer Transformation, presents leading-edge thinking for executives who are embarking on corporate change initiatives. Another book, Strategic Leadership: Top Executives and Their Effects on Organizations, is extensively used by scholars of executive leadership. He also conducted the widely-noted worldwide study of executive leadership, Reinventing the CEO, in collaboration with Korn/Ferry International.

He is an acknowledged leader in his field, serving as President of the prestigious Academy of Management in 1992-93. He also has served on the board of directors of the Strategic Management Society and on the editorial boards of almost all the major scholarly journals in his field.

He is also an active consultant and instructor in corporate executive education programs. His recent clients have included Pfizer, IBM, GE, Schering-Plough, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Merck, ARAMARK, Pepsico, the New York Times, Thomson, McKinsey, and Dow Jones.