Dr. Bruno Verdini - Lecturer

Dr. Verdini has designed advanced strategy, keynotes, coaching, and tailor-made trainings for Cabinet Officials and C-Suite Executives from more than 80 countries. 

At the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Asia School of Business (ASB) collaboration with MIT's Sloan School of Management Global Programs, Dr. Verdini leads top-ranked partnerships focused on the strategic depth and moral compass to thrive in:

• Negotiation, Mediation, and Conflict Resolution
• Competitive and Collaborative Decision-Making
• Leadership Upscaling, Mentorship, and Coaching
• Persuasive Corporate and Political Communication
• International Business and Government Diplomacy 

Dr. Verdini earned MIT’s first ever Interdisciplinary and Interdepartmental Ph.D. in Negotiation, Communication, Diplomacy, and Leadership. 

This work involved outstanding mentors with responsibilities in four departments at MIT and Harvard. 

The mission at the core has been how to address significant power disparities in ways that produce synergy and mutual prosperity by combining four stakeholder virtues: curiosity, creativity, resourcefulness, and resilience. 

To render these mindset, process, and strategic insights tangible, an arena examined has been how to effectively boost high-stakes cross-boundary water, environmental, and energy partnerships between public, corporate, and non-profit stakeholders in developed and emerging economies. 

Dr. Verdini's ensuing framework is the recipient of Harvard Law School’s Award for the Best Doctoral Research of the Year in Negotiation, Competitive Decision-Making, Mediation, and Dispute Resolution. 

The first time in the three-decade history of the prize that it has been awarded to someone at MIT, as well as the first and only time the recipient was born and raised in Latin America.

Dr. Verdini is responsible for designing MIT's top-ranked electives The Art and Science of Negotiation (11.011) and Leadership in Negotiation: Advanced Applications (11.111). 

In the spring of 2016, he took a leap of faith, and created from scratch, an entirely new syllabus as he prepared to teach his first course ever. 11.011 had been taught for decades by distinguished experts, including chief executives and vice-presidents of some of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world. 

With his approach to pedagogy in place, emphasizing one-on-one coaching, assigning equal weight to ethics and spirituality, as to tangible strategy and persuasion, pre-registration increased by a whopping 1,450%, from an average of 40 students to an average of 580 students annually vying for one of the few lottery spots, breaking records campus-wide. 

Every year since Dr. Verdini designed them, 11.011 and 11.111 have been ranked in the Top 1% of semester-long courses offered at MIT. 

This is an unequivocal to the amazing students who have shaped the course experience, both as students and then as members of the teaching team. 

The transition to online education during the pandemic was met with further innovation, earning MIT’s Teaching with Digital Technology Award.

Recognized with the MIT D’Arbeloff Fund Award for Excellence in Education, Dr. Verdini has been entrusted with co-helming MIT’s DUSP Concentration in Negotiation and Leadership. 

The concentration empowers advocates, entrepreneurs, and distinguished Schwarzman, Rhodes, Fulbright, Gates, Mitchell, Marshall, Knight-Hennessy, and Truman scholars across campus. 

Dr. Verdini is the author of Winning Together: The Natural Resource Negotiation Playbook. 

The prize-winning research, published by MIT Press, opened as Amazon’s number #1 best-seller in Environmental and Natural Resource Law for four weeks in a row. 

The book is scheduled for publication in Chinese with MIT Press as well, and builds upon the work he has conducted at the MIT Science Impact Collaborative, where he collaborates as Assistant Director, outlining agile steps to improve prosperity, fairness, and impact in the face of climate, economic, and social risks. 

These insights have resonated globally, including as an official speaker at the Conference of the Parties (COP22, COP23 & COP25) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) in Marrakech (Morocco), Bonn (Germany), and Madrid (Spain), collaborating with the UNFCCC’s Action for Climate Empowerment, the International Center on Comparative Environmental Law, and the President of the UN COP 21. 

Prior to joining MIT, Dr. Verdini, was the youngest Deputy Director for International Affairs at the Ministry of Energy of Mexico, currently the world’s 11th largest economy and the United States’ top trade partner. 

There, he was fortunate to experience and learn from the country’s strategic planning for the negotiations at the Ministerial Meetings of the:

• International Energy Agency 
• International Atomic Nuclear Agency 
• International Renewable Energy Agency 
• International Energy Forum
• Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries 
• UN Industrial Development Organization 
• World Bank 
• World Economic Forum 

Such opportunities further informed learning from the stakeholders negotiating financial, technical, and scientific cooperation agreements with Australia, Brazil, Canada, Denmark, India, Finland, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States of America.

Responsible for keynotes on intersecting priorities in the public sphere, ranging from ethics and artificial intelligence to water diplomacy and energy transition, interlocked with concrete leadership, persuasion, corporate diplomacy, and global affairs strategies, conferences are also regularly conducted in leading institutions in the arts, business, design, engineering, finance, international affairs, natural sciences, and public health realms, including: 

• Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy 
• Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences  
• Harvard Kennedy School of Government
• Harvard Law School
• Johns Hopkins School of Medicine
• MIT School of Engineering 
• National University of Singapore
• Rhode Island School of Design

Fluent in Spanish, French, and English, Dr. Verdini is a Mexican and French national, with Indigenous and Italian roots, whose values have been shaped by the heritage present at home, hailing from Jalisco, Tabasco, Hidalgo, Alsace, Tuscany, Liguria, and Sicily. Trained in international affairs, economics, and public policy at Mexico City’s distinguished Public Center for Research and Teaching in Economics (CIDE), with accrued experience at the Paris Institute of Political Studies (Sciences-Po), he is a former Fulbright recipient, passionate about building bridges across diverse cultures, religions, and traditions, as expressed in the collaborations he has led with stakeholders in Beijing, Bogotá, Buenos Aires, Dubai, Kuala Lumpur, London, Madrid, Seoul, and Singapore, among many other capital cities of our world.