Marshall Ganz is the Rita E. Hauser Senior Lecturer in Leadership, Organizing, and Civil Society at the Harvard Kennedy School, where he teaches and researches leadership, public narrative, and social movements. His courses, including Public Narrative: Self, Us, Now and Organizing: People, Power, Change, examine how storytelling and collective action drive social change. With decades of experience in grassroots organizing, he continues to advise civic, political, and educational organizations worldwide on leadership development and movement-building.
Ganz’s career in organizing began in the 1960s when he left Harvard to join the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights movement. He later spent 16 years with the United Farm Workers alongside Cesar Chavez, helping to unionize farm laborers and build worker power. Throughout the 1980s, he developed grassroots strategies for political campaigns at the local, state, and national levels, playing a key role in shaping the organizing model for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
A widely published scholar, Ganz has contributed to the American Journal of Sociology, American Political Science Review, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times. His book, Why David Sometimes Wins, earned the Michael J. Harrington Book Award for its insights into leadership and strategy in the farmworker movement. In 2010, he received an honorary doctorate in divinity from the Episcopal Divinity School. Through the Leading Change Network, he continues to train and mentor organizations dedicated to leadership, organizing, and social action.
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