2026 Best 40-Under-40 Business Professors: Julia Bodner, Copenhagen Business School

 

Julia Bodner
Copenhagen Business School 

“Julia represents the very best of the next generation of business school faculty: she is a rigorous and internationally visible scholar, an award-winning MBA teacher, and a deeply engaged contributor to both academic and practitioner communities. Julia’s research sits at the intersection of corporate strategy and human capital, examining how acquisitions, diversification, and ownership structures affect not only workforces but also patients. Julia stands out not only for the intellectual ambition of her research, but also its real-world relevance. On top of her research excellence, she has become one of our MBA program’s most impactful instructors, earning the student-elected ‘Best Class of the Year’ teaching award. It is rare to see someone combine research excellence and classroom impact at this level so early in a career, making Julia an ideal fit for this list.” – Vera Rocha

Julia Bodner, 37, is an Assistant Professor at Copenhagen Business School, where she teaches in the MBA and Master’s programs. She earned her Ph.D. from INSEAD and holds an M.A. from the University of St. Gallen and a B.Sc. from the Technical University of Munich. She also holds an affiliation with Aalto University.  

Her research investigates how corporate strategy and organization design affect people, often leveraging large-scale employer–employee and healthcare data from Finland and Denmark. Her work has been published in Management Science and the Journal of Organization Design and has contributed to public and practitioner debates, including coverage in the Financial Times and Harvard Business Review. Her research has received support through multiple competitive grants, including two Strategic Management Society research grants and a Business Finland Research Grant. 

Her teaching focuses on linking strategy with people management. She was awarded “Best Class of the Year” by the CBS MBA Class of 2025 and nominated for the Danish Society for Education and Business Education Award in 2023. 

Across her work, she aims to bring people more centrally into strategy by examining how strategic decisions shape employees’ work and outcomes, and preparing future leaders to design organizations that are both effective and intentional about their impact on people. 

BACKGROUND 

At current institution since what year? 2021 

Education: INSEAD (Ph.D), University of St. Gallen (M.A.), Technical University of Munich (B.Sc.) 

List of MBA/graduate business courses you currently teach: Strategic Human Resource Management (MBA), Managing People in Multinational Corporations (Master’s) 

TELL US ABOUT LIFE AS A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR 

I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when …  The first time I thought “maybe that is something I could do one day” was when I saw a female professor walk onto the stage of the auditorium at my undergraduate institution. Over time, I realized how many fascinating and important questions exist about how we organize people, how difficult it is to do it well, and how many interesting and great people care about and work to address these questions. 

What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it? My research is mostly about how people are affected by strategic decisions of organizations—employees in firms and patients in healthcare organizations. For example, in work with Ambar la Forgia, we studied the effects acquisitions have on fertility clinics, and found that acquired clinics were able to increase both the volume and success of IVF treatments. From interviews and press release data, we learned that mechanisms behind this improvement are that acquired clinics gain resources and managerial capabilities that allow them to focus more on their core medical expertise. In some ongoing work, I investigate these mechanisms in organizations more broadly, looking at whether and how acquisitions change how employees’ work, how their tasks are divided, and how their work is coordinated and paid.  

If I weren’t a business school professor…  I would probably have been a journalist or reporter. For similar reasons to what I like about this job—getting to be inquisitive to figure things out, and then finding good ways to share those insights. 

What do you think makes you stand out as a professor? Probably how much effort I put into getting students to speak up and participate in class. I wasn’t exactly the most outspoken student myself, so I think about this a lot and keep tweaking the classes I teach based on all the different reasons why people might not feel like they can or want to participate.  

Here’s what I wish someone would’ve told me about being a business school professor:  How difficult it is to fully switch off the research and teaching brain. I find myself spontaneously analyzing organization all the time—watching a show or standing in line for coffee, or during my own (minor) shoulder operation with local anesthesia, to see how the medical and support staff are working together. Or when my daughter recently went through an “organizational restructuring” at her daycare, when the groups of “Frogs” and “Butterflies” were joined for workforce-planning reasons.  

Professor I most admire and why:  To pick just one, I would have to say Chris Kobrak, who taught me about the joys of academia and the ropes to find my way into and in it. I think of him often and try to pay it forward any time I meet someone who is interested in academia but does not yet see it as an option or know what steps to take. 

What do you enjoy most about teaching business students?  Seeing students come out of their shells and learning from their diverse perspectives based on their very different cultural and professional backgrounds. And I am always especially excited to meet students with medical backgrounds who think about organizing in healthcare settings. 

What is most challenging? Hearing and including everyone’s voice. I think this is a challenge that is similar in classrooms and organizations. Not everyone is equally inclined to bring in their thoughts, and not volunteering does not mean someone doesn’t have anything to say that is worth being heard. 

When it comes to grading, I think students would describe me as… transparent.  

LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM 

What are your hobbies?  Spending time with friends and family, especially in the mountains of Northern Italy where I am from, and exploring Copenhagen, often by biking around and climbing playgrounds with my 1.5-year-old daughter. I am also pretty obsessed with Chinese and Korean food. 

How will you spend your summer?  I will be mostly in Copenhagen, travel a bit around Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, and spend time by the sea and in the mountains in Italy with family and friends. 

Favorite place(s) to vacation:  Anywhere in Italy and France—more so the longer I haven’t lived there.  

Favorite book(s):  Currently, I read a lot of Astrid Lindgren’s “Pippi Longstocking” to my daughter, and I still learn so much from that character—brave, strong, and unapologetically weird. 

What is currently your favorite movie and/or show and what is it about the film or program that you enjoy so much?  Shows that lend themselves to spontaneous organizational analysis, like Pluribus: everyone in the world, except the protagonist, becomes part of a hive after contracting a virus—and no longer face any problems organizing and coordinating! I also love The Pitt. My favorite organizational design problem this season was when the IT system went down and they brought in a nurse who knew how to run things the old analog way. 

What is your favorite type of music or artist(s) and why? I enjoy listening to oldies but goodies I can sing along to—like Robyn, Joni Mitchell, or The Chicks. And then recently I added some Danish music, to help me improve my Danish. 

THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS 

If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this…  More focus on evidence-based people practices and analytics. Work is becoming more specialized, making it harder to work together smoothly, so people need those skills to take a stance on and convince others about what should be done and why. 

In my opinion, companies and organizations today need to do a better job at…  Putting people at the center of their strategy and organization, and using data to do it. Much better than relying on habit or the intuition of the most powerful or even most experienced people. 

I’m grateful for…  So many things! But especially a village of family, friends, and mentors, and my daughter and husband, with his gentle push to take risks in life, be it on mountains and rocks or at work.   

DON’T MISS: THE ENTIRE 2026 ROSTER OF THE WORLD’S BEST 40-UNDER-40 GRADUATE BUSINESS PROFESSORS 

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