About Gerasimos Kouvaras
Leadership, practice, research and learning across sectors
Gerasimos Kouvaras, PhD, is an executive leader, educator and practitioner–scholar with nearly 30 years of experience in civil society, organisational development and values-based leadership. His career has included senior leadership roles with organisations such as Amnesty International, ActionAid and the World Human Forum, alongside extensive advisory, facilitation and capacity-building work. He is also co-founder of Sarli Kouvaras Consulting P.C., through which he has supported more than 50 national and international organisations and hundreds of individuals through research, training, facilitation and organisational-development work.
He is Academic Director of Applied Research & Innovation and Teaching Fellow at ALBA Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece. His work brings together leadership, sustainability, social impact and executive education, while his academic research examines ideology, identity and organisational change and the ways organisations navigate competing values and understandings of the world.
He is Academic Director of Applied Research & Innovation and Teaching Fellow at ALBA Graduate Business School, The American College of Greece. His work brings together leadership, sustainability, social impact and executive education, while his academic research examines ideology, identity and organisational change and the ways organisations navigate competing values and understandings of the world.
Gerasimos is an active contributor to the Inner Development Goals movement in Greece and internationally. He is co-creator of the Inner Values Incubator (IVI©), a self-assessment tool connecting values, inner development and societal engagement, and founder of the IDG Global Unlearning Network, a virtual hub exploring and promoting the role of unlearning within inner development and leadership practice. His broader civic engagement has included serving as Vice-Chair of the International Forum for Volunteering in Development, co-founding the Fairtrade movement in Greece, and contributing to a range of boards, advisory roles and international networks.
His academic background reflects an interdisciplinary trajectory: a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine from Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, an MBA from Nottingham Trent University and a PhD in Management from Bayes Business School, City St George’s, University of London. He has also completed executive education in nonprofit management and senior leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and Syracuse University’s Maxwell School. Alongside his professional and academic work, he is an internationally recognised photographer, published poet and classically trained vocalist, bringing experiential and arts-informed approaches into leadership development and learning design.