Elan Kogutt graduated from the joint Harvard Business School and Harvard Kennedy School MBA and MPP degree program in 2024 and serves as a Fellow and Conflict and Dialogue Program Lead at the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory. Elan focuses on the transformative processes that ended the world’s most intractable conflicts to understand how violent conflicts have transitioned to peaceful realities and interpersonal and group dialogue.
Before Harvard, Elan spent five years with Accenture, where he was a manager in the public sector practice. Advising senior leaders, Elan led teams to serve diverse government and private sector organizations to improve education, food, and health products and services. He worked with clients like the NYC Division of Early Childhood Education to expand free public childcare to more than 70,0000 children and the World Economic Forum to move food and vaccines more efficiently across the globe. After noticing a dearth of engagement on religion in the workplace, Elan became involved in working to impact policy and advance faith in the workplace and accommodation issues. He served Accenture as the North America Interfaith Education Lead.
Elan pursued the joint degree program at Harvard to hone his conflict resolution, mediation, negotiation, and systems change and adaptive leadership skills. While at Harvard, Elan served as a Coach for the Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Collaboratory, led research on faith-based hate crimes for the Aspen Institute, and worked for campaigns and organizations—including Starts With Us and the Builders movement—to provide strategies and resources for fighting division and polarization. Elan has advised senior government officials, including as a Special Advisor on Innovation at the US Peace Corps and to mayors in Oregon and the United Kingdom.
Elan has published a history of his grandparent's life and biked in the longest charity ride in the world—from Texas to Alaska. Elan is a Business Fellow with Fellowships at Auschwitz for the Study of Professional Ethics and an ROI Fellow.