Naga Lakshmi Damaraju, Ph.D.

Dr. Naga Lakshmi Damaraju is an Associate Professor in the Strategy area at the School of Business and Economics at Sonoma State University.  Prior to joining Sonoma State University, she served as an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the Indian School of Business for a decade (2008-2018).  She has over 24 years of work experience teaching and researching in the area of Strategic Management, both within India and abroad. 

Professor Damaraju teaches competitive strategy and corporate strategy courses focusing on sustainability of competitive advantage of firms in single and multiple lines of businesses.  She served as a resource faculty for Goldman Sachs 10000 women entrepreneurs’ program in India and was involved in training over 1200 women entrepreneurs on issues of strategic management. Her executive education experience includes training early stage employees of McKinsey, Ernst & Young, and women leadership candidates at Accenture, India.  She is a highly well-received teacher across all programs

Professor Damaraju’s research interests span Strategy and Entrepreneurship areas.  Her work focuses on institutional and environmental factors influencing strategic phenomenon/governance choices, e.g., business divestments, CEO selections, network choices, and entrepreneurial activity.  Her work has been published in the Strategic Management Journal and European Management Journal.  In addition, she is an experienced case-writer and has published several cases with instructional materials in textbooks and as part of Ivey Case Collection and Harvard Business Case Collection. 

Professor Damaraju is an active member of the Academy of Management (AOM) and Strategic Management Society (SMS) and consistently presented at their conferences since 2006.  She served as the Global representative from South East Asia at the AOM and as the Chair of the Strategy and Entrepreneurship Interest group, the second largest interest group of SMS.  She organized several high-powered symposia on topics of importance in strategy and entrepreneurship.  She is a member of the editorial board of the Strategic Management Journal and also reviews for several other important journals in the fields of Strategic Management and Entrepreneurship. 

Professor Damaraju obtained her MBA-MS in strategy from the University of Texas at Dallas and Ph.D. from the Ohio State University, in addition to holding multiple degrees from India.