Professor Anita McGahan FBA

Summary

Anita M. McGahan is Senior Research Scientist at the Burnes Center for Social Change at Northeastern University, where she leads the Pi2 project on private innovation in the public interest; she is also University Professor and George E. Connell Chair in Organisations and Society Emerita at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management.  McGahan is a past President of the Academy of Management, the largest association of business-school professors in the world.  She has also served as on the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance, as a Senior Institute Associate at Harvard’s Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness, and as Chair of the Governing Board of Massey College in Canada.

McGahan’s primary area of scholarship is Strategy.  Her current research emphasises entrepreneurship in the public interest and innovative collaboration between public and private organisations.  She has studied global heath strategy and governance in Asia, Africa, Europe, Australia, and the Americas on topics that include pharmaceutical innovation, healthcare delivery, policing, firefighting, climate change, and social change,  The core ideas in her work emphasise private-sector innovation that advances human flourishing.

Professor McGahan earned both her PhD and AM at Harvard University in two years. She holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where she received highest academic honors as a Baker Scholar, and a BA from Northwestern University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. She also spent several years at both McKinsey & Company and Morgan Stanley & Company and was previously on the faculties of both Harvard Business School and Boston University.

Recognitions include the Academy of Management’s Career Distinguished Educator Award for her championship of reform in the core curriculum of Business Schools, and the Academy’s Career Distinguished Service Award for leadership in business research and education.   She also received the Strategic Management Society’s Inaugural Educational Impact Award and the Schendel Best Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society.  She was awarded the Glueck Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management for scholarly work with Professor Leandro Pongeluppe on preservation of the Amazon rain forest.  With Professor Keyvan Vakili, she was awarded the Academy of Management Journal’s Impact Award for work on healthcare innovation for the poor.

She has also received the William D. Guth Distinguished Service Award in Strategic Management from the Academy of Management and the Sumantra Ghoshal Award for Rigour and Relevance in the Study of Management.  In Canada at Massey College, McGahan received the Clarkson Laureateship for public service.  Professor McGahan is a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society and a Fellow of the Academy of Management.