NYU Wagner

Sonia Ospina is Associate Professor of Public Management and Policy and Faculty Director of the Research Center for Leadership in Action. She has taught foundations of nonprofit management, managing public service organizations, qualitative research methods, the theoretical foundations of applied research, women in management and human resources management.

Her work is grounded on institutional analysis and organizational theory and spans both the US and Latin America. Her research explores how responsibility is negotiated and distributed among stakeholders participating in collective problem-solving in society and in organizations and its impact on democracy. Her current interests include social change leadership as public leadership; the dynamics of collaboration across sectors, organizations and communities of practice (i.e labor/management; academics/practitioners); the role of civil society, community participation and nonprofits in governance; and evaluation of public sector performance (governmental and social accountability initiatives).

Professor Ospina currently directs a Ford Foundation sponsored multi-year, national research project on social change leadership in the United States. Her 1996 book Illusions of Opportunity: Employee Expectations and Work Place Inequality (Cornell University Press) explores how public employees make meaning out of the experience of inequality and the implications for organization and management. Her co-edited books on public management reform in Latin America (2003 and 2004) focus on the changing relations of accountability for governmental performance, given large-scale reform in the region.

Professor Ospina earned her Ph.D. in Sociology and a Masters in Public Policy and Management from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.