2025 Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors: Kristen Duke, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

Kristen Duke
Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto

“Kristen has always been incredibly passionate about teaching. She makes learning accessible and fun and goes above and beyond to create the best lesson plans for her students (even making fun videos herself to help engage students and improve their learning). Students LOVE her – with good reason! – and find her fun, approachable, and brilliant.” – Allie Lieberman

Kristen Duke, 33, is an Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management and a Research Fellow in the Behavioural Economics in Action at Rotman (BEAR) Center. 

Her research uses lab and field experiments to explore how the structure or framing of choices impacts consumers’ judgments, decisions, and experiences. Her work has been published in leading journals such as Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Science, Nature Medicine, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, as well as practitioner outlets like Harvard Business Review. Her findings have been featured in popular press outlets including Late Night with Seth Meyers, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, NPR, Time Magazine, FiveThirtyEight, and CNN.

Kristen was named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar in 2023. She received the 2022 Petro-Can Young Innovator Award for innovative, cutting-edge work, the Financial Times #1 Business School Research Paper with Social Impact in 2020, Journal of Consumer Research’s Ferber Award for the best dissertation-based article, the AMA-EBSCO-RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Marketing, the Connaught New Researcher award, and a University of Toronto Merit Award for top faculty across the university. 

She has received the Rotman Teaching Award in every year she has taught. She has also received several grants to fund her research, including from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC), the Institute for Gender and the Economy (GATE), and the Marketing Science Institute. She is currently an editorial board member of Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing, and Marketing Letters. 

BACKGROUND

At current institution since what year? 2019

Education: Ph.D. in Marketing, University of California San Diego; B.A. in Economics and Psychology, The College of New Jersey

List of MBA courses you currently teach: Marketing and Behavioural Economics

 TELL US ABOUT LIFE AS A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR

I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when… I realized (a) that marketing is the perfect intersection of my two favorite subjects, economics and psychology, and (b) that there existed a career whose purpose is discovering things no one knew before. It is a fascinating job: observing how everyday people make decisions in their everyday environments and formalizing those observations into theories. I love that being in a business school inspires you to focus on real problems that exist out in the world–turning theories toward applications that can help people live better and happier lives.

What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it? I study how small changes to the presentation of a choice can meaningfully change people’s decisions, with downstream impacts on their welfare. Recently, I have been exploring the idea of “quantity integration.” For many choices, people have to decide both whether to act (e.g., whether to buy some pizza, whether to put money into a savings account, whether to go on a run) and how much to act (how many slices to get, how much money to save, how far to run). 

My coauthors and I have found that people are much more likely to act when simultaneously considering both “whether” and “how much” compared to when first only thinking about “whether.” Small changes to the decision environment (like putting quantities onto an “add to cart” button) can dramatically increase people’s likelihood of acting. In lab studies, field experiments with companies, and longitudinal studies, I have found quantity integration to substantially increase actions ranging from opting in to financial programs to attending mindfulness meditation sessions. I am excited to continue learning how best to structure decision environments to motivate people to act for self betterment.

If I weren’t a business school professor… In alternate universes, one version of me is a dive master in Southeast Asia, another version of me is a traveling journalist, and another is constantly crawling cafes in Paris. In a one-butterfly-flap-away universe, I would be working at the Fed (I almost worked as an econometrician there).

What do you think makes you stand out as a professor? My energy and enthusiasm! Teaching feels like a performance, so I always try to project out a ton of energy and passion and hope that the students “catch” it and return it to me. Also: bad memes. 

This semester, we had a recurring Moo Deng image whose job was to remind students to fix their posture. Moo also made appearances in our time preferences lesson and we collab’ed on teaching the students about system 1 heuristics. She was even featured in some of my students’ end of semester group presentations.

One word that describes my first time teaching: Exhilarating

Here’s what I wish someone would’ve told me about being a business school professor: Professors can be fun, too! I am lucky to have incredibly vibrant, curious, funny, caring, and brilliant friends in this field. 

Professor I most admire and why: I owe my path to the world’s best advisor, On Amir. On taught me how to turn a speculation into an interesting research question and how to test it in creative, rigorous ways–always with an eye to real behavior. Aside from being super productive and a brilliant, thoughtful researcher, what I admire most about On is his passion for life. He finds time to maintain so many hobbies, cares so deeply about his family, knows every minute detail of the Marvel universe, and casually flies planes on the weekends. Once you are On’s student, you are also his family. He still calls me out of the blue (6 years post-graduation) to ask how I’m doing, and he is the first person I turn to for career (and often, life) advice. If I could be a fraction of the advisor he is, it would be my crowning achievement.

I am also deeply grateful to Shaun Wiley, my undergrad psychology professor. I was a freshman economics major dabbling in psych classes for fun when I took his methods course. He was deeply enthusiastic about doing research the right way and also deeply committed to his students. Without him pulling me aside after class one day to nudge me to work in a research lab (Lisa Grimm’s amazing cognitive psychology group), I never would have ended up in this world. I hope I can follow in his footsteps as a beacon pointing students toward exciting potential futures.

TEACHING MBA STUDENTS

What do you enjoy most about teaching business students? They are enthusiastic and love to participate. I often learn just as much from them as they learn from me. 

What is most challenging? The behind-the-scenes admin (grading, emails, writing a syllabus that conforms to all of the legalese…)

In one word, describe your favorite type of student: Curious

In one word, describe your least favorite type of student: Checked-out (is that one word?)

When it comes to grading, I think students would describe me as… fair (I hope!)

LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM

What are your hobbies? I love rock climbing and scuba diving. As a kid, I was a competitive gymnast turned hurdler and triple jumper. Basically, I like to spend my time getting off solid ground.

How will you spend your summer? Exploring! My favorite part of this job is the freedom it offers. This summer, I’ll be in Japan, Muskoka (the lakes region near Toronto), New Jersey, and New York City. The summer is also a stress-free time to make progress on research without the chaos of the semester, so I’m hoping to finalize some papers.

Favorite place(s) to vacation: My first flight alone was to study abroad in Paris, and it has held my heart ever since then. I am also obsessed with Thailand: the food, the people, the water.

Favorite book(s): It’s so hard for me to pick a favorite, but I just finished Shadow Divers by Robert Kurson (thanks for lending it, Emily!) and loved it. I have also loved Kazuo Ishiguro’s work since reading Never Let Me Go as a teenager. I also find Project Hail Mary to be the perfect audiobook.

What is currently your favorite movie and/or show and what is it about the film or program that you enjoy so much? I just finished Severance. I love that it feels like Lost–so many fan theories, so much speculation. I have listened to podcasts, read countless Reddit threads, and argued with my husband about what it all means. My students are probably tired of me shoehorning Severance quotes into my lecture slides. Sorry, guys, but the work is mysterious and important.

What is your favorite type of music or artist(s) and why? My favorite band is MisterWives. I love their upbeat, energizing music that makes you want to get up and dance. They are also so passionate about their fans: every time I see them live, they put on an incredible show and go all out. 

THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS

If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this… First, collaboration with companies and policymakers. I try to connect my assignments to real business problems companies are facing in the world, but am increasingly working to also integrate a policy perspective. Most recently, I made my final assignment a research report for the Financial Consumer Agency of Canada’s student paper competition on improving individuals’ financial situations. The tools I teach–choice architecture, nudging, and understanding decision environments/emotions/hot and cold states/etc. have the potential to change people’s lives for the better, and I’d love for my students to be part of that change.

Second: joy, humor, and spontaneity. We are all so busy (myself included) that we get in a rhythm of moving quickly and sticking rigidly to a schedule. My favorite classroom moments have been long, spur-of-the-moment tangents prompted by a student raising a wacky, neat idea.

In my opinion, companies and organizations today need to do a better job at… Hiring behavioral scientists! In all seriousness, testing and running experiments is key. Tech companies have caught on to the power of constantly running A/B tests, which is a big leap forward. Still, they spend less time on exploring the psychology of the customer: trying to understand not only *that* X caused Y, but also *why* X caused Y, and *when* and *for whom* we can expect the biggest impacts. Being interested in learning about the mind of the consumer can be a superpower.

I’m grateful for… My incredibly supportive husband, my family and in-laws who have always believed in and supported me, my amazing friends who make life fun, and my all-star pup Peekaboo. I am also very grateful to be alive and healthy, with this amazing job.

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