World’s Best B-School Professors: Adam Galinsky

A leading expert on power and influence, Kellogg’s Adam Galinsky is one of the world’s best business school profs

Adam Galinsky

Columbia Business School

Claim to Fame: Power and Status

Age: 42

Discipline: Management, Behavioral Science

Education:

Princeton University, PhD, Social Psychology

Princeton University, MA, Social Psychology

Harvard University, BA, Psychology

At Columbia Since: 2012

Before Kellogg: Taught at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management for a decade until this year

Fun Fact: Lived in Indonesia with a family in high school and worked in a pub in London one summer in college. Picked up skiing and scuba diving after the age of 30.

If I wasn’t teaching, my dream job would be: Political Advisor

Best part of the job: Getting to explore ideas. I am an intellectually curious person so my job is like a kid in a candy store. I love teaching in a b-school because although I am a hard core social scientist who cares deeply about theory, I want my research to matter and have a positive impact.

Worst part of the job: The brutal nature of the peer review process.

Professor Adam Galinsky is the leading authority on the use of power and the psycho-social remnants that occur as a result of it.

Galinsky’s research is so powerful (no pun intended) that it helped make history when a Nicaraguan banker was awarded the largest defamation award in the history of Florida courts with the help of Galinsky as the trial’s expert witness. During the trial, Galinsky used the insights generated from his research to show the durability of defamation and the stickiness of slander. The result was a judgment of $37.2 million in damages, making it #44 on a list of top U.S. verdicts.

Galinsky has published more than 100 articles, books, and chapters. At Kellogg, his research shines through in his lectures as he teaches future business leaders the implications of power and influence in ethical leadership. This year, he received the Ver Steeg Distinguished Research Fellow from Northwestern University, an award given to just one faculty member each year across the university in recognition of his research deemed to enhance the international and national reputation of the university. He has also been honored for his outstanding teaching, twice winning Kellogg’s Chair’s Core Course teaching award for his Leadership in Organizations course.

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