Professor Dame Vlatka Hlupic | 80 Outstanding Global Women 2025

VLATKA HLUPIC: A JOURNEY IN LEADERSHIP TRANSFORMATION

Vlatka Hlupic: A journey in leadership transformation

Featured in our 80 Outstanding Global Women, Hlupic has devoted her life to humanising business by enabling thoughtful and visionary leaders to drive more conscious and impactful organisations. Marianne Curphey learns more.

From a young age, the seeds of service, leadership, and transformation were already taking root for Vlatka Hlupic, an international award-winning thought leader, CEO advisor, professor, and bestselling author of The Management Shift and Humane Capital.

“At seven years old, I found myself already engrossed in reading and writing before formal schooling even started,” she explains. Her teacher suggested she be fast-tracked at school, but her parents wanted her to have a “normal childhood”, so her father bought her a blackboard instead. The young Vlatka proceeded to teach her friends and the experience of tutoring them opened her eyes to how rewarding education, leadership and empowerment could be.

Fast forward to 2025 where this distinguished academic, CEO advisor and entrepreneur has just been made a Dame. Her innovative, research-based methodologies and tools have helped many organisations make changes that create more fulfilling and purposeful work environments.

LEADING FROM THE FRONT

The lessons for friends around the blackboard in the front room of her childhood home was the beginning of Professor Dame Vlatka Ariaana Hlupic’s lifelong mission to transform leadership and create a more humanised world of business.

“It empowered me, taking on a leadership role at a young age,” she explains. “At the age of seven, I started a life of service, and that has been a clear purpose and goal for me, to serve humanity, to serve and empower people, especially women.”

Professor Hlupic grew up in Croatia and attended the XV Gymnasium (known as MIOC) in Zagreb, a prestigious maths school. After graduating, she studied Economic Cybernetics at the University of Zagreb, followed by an MSc in Information Systems, before moving to the UK to study a PhD in Information Systems at the London School of Economics (LSE). Initially, she had dreamed of becoming a fashion designer, because of her passion for art and creativity, but her parents encouraged her to pursue a more mainstream career which would draw on her academic abilities and credentials.

She was a gifted child who was “interested in everything” and studied Economic Cybernetics and Computer Science at University at a time when both disciplines were an unusual choice for a young woman. She was not just interested in STEM subjects, however, and immersed herself in studying organisational behaviour, psychology and neuroscience among other subjects.

FINDING THE CORRECT PATH

After finishing her studies, she enjoyed a career as a computer scientist, and it was not until she was at home on maternity leave with her second child that she began to envision a path where she could help organisations to manage their human resources better and create more humanised organisational culture. It was the beginning of a journey which would see her forge a career in transforming organisations and managing people rather than systems.

“About 20 years ago, I went through one of my own big shifts because I felt Computer Science was not my life purpose,” she explains. “I was on maternity leave, and I had time to think about my purpose, my future life direction, and why I was here.”

She trained in various areas such as executive coaching, NLP and psychological kinesiology in addition to academic studies and decided to become a business school professor so she could help leaders and organisations to change and get to a higher level of thinking and working. Gradually, through her own experiences, and feedback she received from friends and colleagues who had not always had happy experiences of being managed in different workplaces and organisations, she began creating ideas for her concept of: The Management Shift.

“That was when my ultimate mission crystallised, and I realised that I really wanted to work with leaders and to help to humanise the world of business,” she says. The desire to change business for the better had deeply personal roots. “I have seen how people have suffered at work —colleagues, family, friends, and it upset me. The   I think about them, the more determined I am to keep going.”

DEVELOPING CONSCIOUS LEADERS AND BUSINESS

She had a strong sense that business could be a force for good, if leaders could be inspired and educated in how to become custodians of the planet and coaches of the people they managed.

“The concept was to help leaders move towards a more conscious business, one which could be a force for good, not just one that was about short-term money-making and profit objectives,” she says. “I believed that we could build great businesses that were positive places to work, not places where employees were getting sick from stress at work, or which polluted the environment or created damage to the ecosystem. I felt   there were businesses out there that wanted to be more conscious and purposeful about their role in this world, and that it was my mission to help them achieve that.”

Driven by a desire to make the world a better place, she took a multi-disciplinary approach to her work, which enabled her to envisage novel solutions to problems.

“Some people describe me as a visionary or futurist, and I do feel that I am very intuitive,” she says. “Sometimes I think, how can everybody not see it?”

When the pandemic hit, people began to recognise the relevance of her work even more as managers needed to become leaders of hybrid and remote teams. On her own life journey, becoming a mother had further fuelled her desire to change workplaces for the better, so that the new generation of workers could fulfil their potential and work at happier and healthier workplaces.

THE MANAGEMENT SHIFT EXPLAINED

Professor Hlupic is the author of four books, the most well-known are Humane Capital (2018) and The Management Shift: How to Harness the Power of People and Transform Your Organisation for Sustainable Success (2014). Building on the ideas and case studies from these books, she then began to create transformational programmes for organisations that would analyse their current leadership approach and organisational culture, and coach them through a process that would transform them from a stale, moribund culture to one that empowered employees and took a more entrepreneurial approach, thereby future proofing the business.

Those leaders who have participated in the programmes have reported huge benefits, on both a personal and a professional level. According to The Management Shift framework, individuals and organisations progress through five levels of mindset and organisational culture – from lifeless to limitless.

The five-level Management Shift model analyses organisations and places them on a five-level scale. Level 1 is the type of organisation where employees are disengaged, the culture is lifeless and apathetic, and the business is stuck in a state of lethargy. Level 2 is characterised by only a bare minimum of work being done, whilst Level 3 is about command and control and micromanagement. Level 4, which is where most organisations can be coached to, is a supportive, entrepreneurial culture where employees are empowered and leaders are mindful and visionary. At that level, all KPIs improve substantially, and workplaces become healthier and happier. Level 5, at the top of the Management Shift, is a limitless mindset and unbounded culture where big innovations are achieved.

EMPOWERING LEADERS ACROSS INDUSTRIES

Through her work, Professor Hlupic has helped countless organisations change for the better. She is Professor of Leadership and Management at Hult Ashridge Executive Education, a former Adjunct Faculty at London Business School, a consultant and visiting faculty for Said Business School and a global faculty member of Headspring and Duke Executive Education.

As an international thought leader and CEO of Management Shift Solutions Limited, she runs the flagship The Management Shift Leadership Development Programme, a comprehensive four month course designed for senior leadership teams. The course is CPD accredited as well as organisational transformation programmes powered by the Organisational Health Scan diagnostics.

She has won over 30 international awards and has been consistently ranked among the world’s most influential HR thinkers. As a CEO advisor, she has redefined modern management practices, empowering organisations to achieve higher performance, engagement, and profitability whilst becoming a force for good. In April 2025, she became a Dame due to her values, service and drive to make the world a better place.

Her programmes have enabled her to advise the leaders of FTSE 100 companies and governments and has helped clients in a variety of industries to go through profound transformation – from the IT industry, higher education, media, luxury retail, professional services and energy sector to government departments, charities and the NHS.

Read interview with Marianne Curphey – Leading with purpose: A life of leadership and innovation