Linda Brimm

Linda Brimm is Emeritus Professor of Organisational Behaviour at INSEAD, teaching both in the MBA and executive programmes. Along with her teaching responsibilities, Dr. Brimm created and ran the psychological service for the MBA programme at INSEAD. 

Trained as a clinical psychologist, she also works with both individuals and families at a centre she co-founded in Paris. 



She received her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology and Psychoanalysis from the Université of Paris. Her undergraduate degree is from Cornell University, her Master's Degree is from Northeastern University, and she completed a postgraduate program in clinical psychology at Hebrew University in Israel. 



Identity Development, Diversity and Change have been an interest in her research, consulting and teaching over the years. Her initial research focused on managing work force diversity and the development of people’s lives and careers. Dr. Brimm's research and consulting interests currently focuses on Global Cosmopolitans. Her groundbreaking book, Global Cosmopolitans, The Creative Edge of Difference, published in September 2010, combines her study of identity development and change in the lives of the next generation of global leaders and the use of narrative writing and analysis. Her work has been described as presenting “a whole new concept of careers, and thereby, becomes one of the most important career development books published in the last decade.”

While her earlier work focused on competence and challenges affecting identity for people in relatively early career and life stages, her current research focuses on people that are in a different life stage and have experienced significant success in their professional lives. Her current research examines the lives of Global Cosmopolitan senior executives and entrepreneurs. Using a narrative approach she is pulling together through their stories and analysis, the impact of different life stages on the lives of Global Cosmopolitans and the impact of growing up in a different generation and in a different global Context. This work should also afford an understanding of the ways people find to manage what appear to the outsider to be seamless transitions from one world to another.

Read case studies by Linda here.

• linda.brimm@insead.edu