Professor Danica Purg is the Founder and Dean of IEDC-Bled School of Management, Slovenia, and the President of CEEMAN, the International Association for Management Development in Dynamic Societies, which brings together 200 management development institutions from 50 countries.

Prof. Purg is professor of leadership and effective management at IEDC-Bled School of Management. She has been an innovator in management education, incorporating the arts and artistic processes into management education and building an ethics component into the curriculum of all longer management programs at IEDC since its inception. She is a frequent guest speaker at universities around the world and at international conferences. Prof. Purg has authored and co-authored several books and numerous articles on leadership and leadership development issues. In 2021, Springer published an update of the Hidden Champions research titled Hidden Champions in Dynamically Changing Societies: Critical Success Factors for Market Leadership, with Prof. Purg being the co-editor and co-author. In 2018, Springer published the book Business and Society: Making Management Education Relevant for the 21st Century, which was co-edited by Prof. Purg. The article “Why art in management education? Questioning meaning”, written together with colleague Ian Sutherland and published in 2017 by the Academy of Management Review is very often quoted in management literature worldwide. In 2015, a special chapter about her leadership journey was published in the book Women and Leadership Around the World by Information Age Publishing, USA, authored by Susan Madsen.

Prof. Purg has received numerous national and international awards for her outstanding achievements in the field of international business education. The President of the Republic of Slovenia awarded her with the Honorary Order of Freedom for her contribution to management development in Slovenia and Central and Eastern Europe. She received the 2010 International Educator of the Year Award by the Academy of International Business (AIB) for her outstanding achievements in international business education. In January 2015, the Managers’ Association of Slovenia conferred upon her the Lifetime Achievement Award in the field of management. In 2018, she received the highest French order of merit “National Order of the Legion of Honour” for her dedication and support in strengthening bilateral relations among France and Slovenia, especially in the field of management education. And, in July 2022 Prof. Purg, was awarded the Order of Rio Branco, the highest decoration of the Federative Republic of Brazil for a foreign national.

Prof. Purg’s influence extends to universities and institutions worldwide. She is the Chairlady of the Academic board of the International Research Center for Hidden Champions at Zhejiang University, China. From 2021-2023 she served as the President of Alliance of Management Development Associations in Rising Economies, co-founded by CEEMAN, with the aim to accelerate the growth of relevant and excellent management education in the global markets that need it most. Prof. Danica Purg is very active in PRME (Principles of Responsible Management Education), an initiative started by UN Global Compact, where she held many important roles: in 2013, she was nominated chair of the PRME Steering Committee and from December 2019 till June 2020 Prof. Purg served as the Acting Chair of the PRME Steering Committee, and successfully completed the task to transform PRME. In 2017, the Global UN PRME Forum awarded Prof. Purg for her pioneering work in establishing the UN PRME initiative. Prof. Purg also heads the European Leadership Centre (ELC) and was for 11 years president of UN Global Compact Slovenia. She is a member of several international advisory boards at management schools around the world, including University of Stellenbosch Business School, in South Africa, School of Management Zhejiang University, China, ESSCA School of Management, France, and Matena International School of Leadership and Professional Development, Armenia.

After graduating from the Faculty of Political Science in Ljubljana, she completed her PhD at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Belgrade, and extensively studied at Harvard Business School, IMD Lausanne, INSEAD Fontainebleau, Technological University Delft, London University, Sorbonne and at Kalamazoo College, Michigan. Prof. Purg is a fellow of the International Academy of Management (IAM), Doctor Honoris Causa at several universities around the world (the most recent is from the University of Wollongong, Australia, which she received in 2023), and holds two honorary professorship titles.