Kendy Hess | Saïd Business School

Profile

Kendy is a Senior Research Fellow at Oxford Saïd and the Brake Smith Associate Professor of Ethics and Social Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross.

Kendy holds a PhD in Philosophy from the University of Colorado, a MA from Northwestern University, and a JD from Harvard Law School. Before taking her PhD, she had 15-year career as a corporate environmental lawyer, first as a partner at Altheimer & Gray and later as of counsel at Greenberg Traurig.

Expertise:

Ethics
Meta-ethics
Applied Ethics
Capitalism
Political Philosophy
Business Ethics

Research

Kendy’s scholarship focuses on competing conceptions of the firm and of the institution of business as a whole. She is particularly interested in the normative implications of these different conceptions, both ethical and political. Her work in this area yields a distinctive, liberal-arts based approach to business ethics pedagogy which was recently recognized by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Engagement

Kendy engages with a variety of people and organisations to address issues regarding the moral and political obligations of firms, especially as they relate to the environment. She travels widely to attend and speak at conferences and seminars in her field, referees papers for numerous academic journals, and serves on the editorial board of the Philosophy of Management. Kendy also leads talks and workshops on her liberal arts-based approach to business pedagogy.

Kendy is currently serving as the treasurer for the Society for Business Ethics, where she has been a member since 2014 and as the Vice Chair of the Board for the Native Plant Trust, where she has taken on primary responsibility for initiatives around Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, and Access.

Teaching

At Oxford Saïd Kendy teaches modules that address the possibility of ethical – ie authentic and meaningful – action in the workplace, as well as exploring the ethical and political obligations of various kinds of organisations. She teaches on

MBA
Executive MBA
MSc Finance and Economics
MSc Law and Finance

At the College of the Holy Cross, Kendy created and teaches courses in Capitalism, Ethical Advocacy in Business, Ethics and Work, Politics and Work, and Environmental Political Theory in addition to more traditional offerings in Ethics and Political Theory.

Kendy has been the recipient of the Marfuggi Advising Award (2021, College of the Holy Cross), an annual award which honours faculty who have demonstrated effective academic advising and mentorship of students that was extraordinary in quality and sustained over at least three years, based on student nominations.

She has also won the Graduate Teaching Excellence Award (2006-07): The Graduate School, University of Colorado. Each year the Graduate School selects up to ten instructors from across the university to receive this prestigious award on the basis faculty evaluations, student evaluations and a statement from the instructor.