About the Authors

Professor James E. Austin is the Eliot I. Snider and Family Professor of Business Administration, Emeritus, at the Harvard Business School, having joined the faculty in 1972. He was the Co-Founder and Chairman of the HBS Social Enterprise Initiative. Having authored and edited two dozen books, dozens of articles, and hundreds of case studies, Dr. Austin is recognized internationally as an expert on cross-sector collaboration and social enterprise. Among various awards, Professor Austin received the 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award in Collaboration Research by the International Symposium in Cross Sector Social Interactions, the 2008 Faculty Pioneer Award in Social Entrepreneurship Education by the Aspen Institute and Ashoka, and The Virginia A. Hodgkinson Research Prize-2001, by The Independent Sector for his The Collaboration Challenge book. He has been an advisor to corporations, nonprofit organizations, and governments throughout the world, including serving as a Special Advisor to the White House. He is also one of the founding leaders of the Social Enterprise Knowledge Network (SEKN).

Dr. M. May Seitanidi (FRSA) is Associate Professor of Strategy at Kent Business School, University of Kent, and Visiting Fellow at the International Centre for Corporate Social Responsibility (ICCSR) at Nottingham University Business School, University of Nottingham, UK. She has published extensively on cross-sector social partnerships in academic journals as well as popular press. Her work for over 20 years, as a practitioner and academic, focused on all types of cross-sector social interactions, previously on philanthropy and socio-sponsorship and currently on social partnerships. She was the founder of the Hellenic Sponsorship Centre (1994), of the magazine Sponsors and Sponsorships (1995), and more recently (2005) of a group focused on nonprofit-business partnerships with 400 academic and practitioner members interested in partnerships: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/NPO-BUSPartnerships/. In 2007 she founded the International Symposia Series on “Cross Sector Social Interactions,” organized by academics at leading universities around the world. Since 2006 she edits the “Annual Review of Social Partnerships” (ARSP), promoting cross-sector collaboration for the social good. She has served as a consultant and trainer for many private, public, and non-governmental organizations. Books include The Politics of Partnerships (2010, short-listed for the SIM 2013 Best Book Award) and Social Partnerships and Responsible Business: A Research Handbook (2013, coedited with Andrew Crane).