Press Kit: Bios

Long Bio

Modupe Akinola is an experienced educator and business professional who has spent her career leading and advising global organizations on their strategic direction and leadership effectiveness. Akinola currently holds the position of Barbara and David Zalaznick Professor of Business and Faculty Director of the Bernstein Center for Leadership and Ethics at Columbia Business School.

Akinola’s award-winning research examines how organizational environments can lead to stress, and how this stress can spill over to affect performance. She studies why some people thrive under stress while others buckle, looking at how we react psychologically and physiologically to stressful situations and how these responses can affect outcomes like negotiations and creativity. She also studies workforce diversity, including the biases that affect the recruitment and retention of women and people of color in organizations.

Akinola has published on these topics in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented journals such as Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Psychological Science, Academy of Management Journal, and Harvard Business Review. Her research has been widely covered in media outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, The Financial Times, and The Economist. Akinola has been recognized as a Rising Star by the Association of Psychological Science and received Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s esteemed Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Fellowship.

Akinola co-heads and teaches the required first-year Leadership course in the Columbia Business School MBA program as well as “Global Immersion: Lessons from Rwanda on Conflict, Leadership, Change, and Business Opportunities” and “Success, Satisfaction, and Sustainability.” She has chaired two executive offerings: “Developing Black Leaders in Financial Services” and “Advancing Racial Equity” and teaches extensively in executive programs such as the “Advanced Management Program” and the “Senior Leaders Program for Nonprofit Professionals.” Akinola is one of the most highly rated business school professors at Columbia Business School and received Columbia Business School’s Dean’s Award for Teaching Excellence in 2015.

Prior to pursuing a career in academia, Akinola worked in professional services at Bain & Company and Merrill Lynch and continues to advise global leaders on industry-defining challenges in retail, consumer products, high technology, and manufacturing. She offers advisory services to leaders in a broad range of industries and to school districts and police departments across the country in their reform efforts.

In addition to her professional roles, Akinola is committed to volunteer work for nonprofit youth development organizations and educational institutions across the globe. She serves on Harvard University’s Board of Overseers. Additionally, she is a trustee emerita at The Brearley School, where she previously served as Board President, Treasurer and Finance Committee Chair. She has also held trustee positions for International Youth Leadership Institute and the Bert King Foundation. Additionally, Akinola has worked in Accra, Ghana where she created several nurseries and literacy centers aimed at educating underprivileged children and their parents.

She is the host of the TED Business Podcast and is prominently featured as an expert in the National Geographic docuseries Limitless with Chris Hemsworth.

Akinola received her Ph.D. from Harvard University in Organizational Behavior, where she was awarded Harvard Business School’s Wyss Award for Excellence in Doctoral Research. She holds a B.A., magna cum laude, and M.A. in psychology from Harvard University. She also holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School. Akinola resides in New York City and is a first-generation New Yorker whose parents were born and raised in West Africa.