Payal Kumar is an independent scholar with rich experience in senior leadership positions in both higher education and the corporate sector, including former Registrar and Professor at a North Indian university. Payal has published widely on topics including gender, diversity and leadership. She is the series editor of Palgrave Studies in Leadership and Followership and sits on the editorial board of several reputed journals. The topic of her thesis for the Fellow Management Programme, XLRI, India, was Personality Incongruence in the Mentoring Dyad and Its Impact on the Protégé.