Katherine (Katy) Milkman

Assistant Professor of Operations and Information Management

 

Age:  28

Institution: University of Pennsylvania Wharton School

Hometown:  Washington, DC

Marital Status:  married

Children:  None

Education: Harvard University, PhD, Business and Computer Science

Princeton University, BSE, Operations Research and Financial Engineering

Courses:  Managerial Decision Making

At Wharton Since:  2009

Fun Fact: “As a teenager, I was one of the 150 highest ranked 18-and-under women’s tennis players in the United States and I later went on to play varsity tennis for Princeton University.”

In life, we all make bad choices—many of which are made deliberately. We don’t exercise despite medical research that shows we’ll live longer, we overindulge ourselves on junk food, we under save for retirement, we procrastinate. The list goes on. Professor Katherine Milkman’s research documents various ways in which individuals systematically deviate from making optimal choices. In particular, her work examines what factors lead people to under-save for retirement, exercise too little, eat too much junk food, and watch too many lowbrow films. Her research has been featured in The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune, BusinessWeek, The Economist, and Harvard Business Review.

Katy Milkman is among “The World’s 40 Best B-School Profs Under the Age of 40“