laura hartman

Laura Pincus Hartman is an educator, consultant, nonprofit leader, and Professor Emerita of Business Ethics at DePaul University’s Driehaus College of Business, where she served from 1990 to 2018 as the Vincent de Paul Professor of Business Ethics. Over more than three decades, her work has spanned higher education, nonprofit leadership, governance, ethics and compliance, business strategy, healthcare, and social impact across for-profit, public, and philanthropic settings. Informed by her legal background and grounded in a sustained commitment to human rights and social justice, Hartman is widely recognized for helping institutions and leaders navigate complex ethical, strategic, and operational challenges. 

Hartman is co-founder and currently serves as Executive Director of the School of Choice Education Organization, which oversees l’Ecole de Choix in Haiti. Choix provides high quality academic programming for Haitian students living in poverty as they proceed through middle and high school, and beyond. 

She also was instrumental in the design and implementation of Zafèn, an innovative micro-development, finance, and education system in Haiti that was developed in partnership between DePaul, the Vincentian Family and Fonkoze, Haiti's largest alternative bank.  

Hartman's roles at DePaul were diverse, including leadership positions such as Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs, Special Assistant to the President, Vincent de Paul Professor, and Director of DePaul's Institute for Business and Professional Ethics. 

Across her academic and nonprofit work, she has focused on social justice, education leadership, teacher development, social and emotional learning, poverty alleviation, cross-sector partnerships, disaster relief and recovery, program oversight, assessment and evaluation, governance, communication, human resources, and ethical decision-making in business and institutional life.

In addition to her long career at DePaul, Hartman served as the inaugural Director of the Susilo Institute for Ethics in the Global Economy and Clinical Professor of Business Ethics at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business from 2015 to 2017. Her international teaching appointments have included KEDGE Business School, INSEAD, HEC, the Université Paul Cezanne Aix Marseille III, the University of Toulouse, and the Grenoble Graduate School of Business.  

From 2009 to 2012, Hartman served as Director of External Partnerships for Zynga.org, where Zynga players contributed nearly $20 million to domestic and international social causes through games including FarmVille and Words With Friends. She has published more than 90 journal articles, books, and cases, and has advised startups, multinational corporations, nonprofit organizations, and educational institutions. Her honors include the Microsoft CreateGOOD Award at Cannes Lions, recognition as one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business and a member of its League of Extraordinary Women, and selection by Ethisphere as one of the 100 Most Influential People in Business Ethics. 

Hartman graduated magna cum laude from Tufts University and received her law degree from the University of Chicago Law School.