CV

Sara Ilić completed her doctorate at the Lucerne Graduate School in Ethics LGSE at the University of Lucerne, in cooperation with the Yale Center for Faith & Culture at Yale University. As part of this collaboration, she spent a research semester at Yale University in New Haven, USA, in 2024.

Her dissertation in the field of business and leadership ethics, titled “Responsible Management Learning through Sustainable Design Thinking? A Study for Theory and Practice,” was supervised by Prof. Dr. Peter G. Kirchschläger. The work examines to what extent the sustainability-oriented innovation approach Sustainable Design Thinking and the existential educational approach Life Worth Living have the potential to foster ethical, responsible, and sustainable management learning, both in higher business education and in professional practice.

Her doctoral research was supported by scholarships from the Hanns Seidel Foundation’s program for the advancement of gifted students and from LaKoF Bayern.

In addition to her research, she teaches as a lecturer at the University of Lucerne and Munich University of Applied Sciences. Previously, she taught at Fresenius University of Applied Sciences, where her teaching was recognized with the 2023/2024 Teaching Award. She is also a Yale Life Worth Living Fellow.

Sara Ilić earned her Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Economics and Organizational Sciences through a work-integrated study program at the University of the Bundeswehr Munich, in cooperation with the reinsurance group Munich Re, where she worked internationally for a period of eleven years in London, Geneva, Zurich, and Munich.

She is married and a mother of two sons.

Research

Research and teaching focus

• Responsible management & responsible management learning
• Business, corporate, & leadership ethics
• Life Worth Living
• Sustainable Design Thinking
• Industrial & organizational psychology

Research projects

• “Responsible Management Learning through Sustainable Design Thinking? A Study for Theory and Practice”