Anita McGahan is Professor of Strategic Management and the George E. Connell Chair in Organizations & Society at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. She is cross-appointed to the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy; the Physiology Department of the Medical School; and the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Among many administrative roles at the University of Toronto, she served as Associate Dean of Research and Director of the Rotman School’s PhD program between 2010 and 2015.

Professor McGahan is a globally pre-eminent authority on industry evolution and the evolution of competitive advantage. She is internationally renowned, both in academia and in practice, for addressing some of the world’s most difficult and important problems, notably around global health. She has written four books and more than 150 articles, case studies, notes, and other published material in her areas of expertise. Her current research emphasizes entrepreneurship in the public interest and innovative collaboration between public and private organizations. She is also pursuing a long-standing interest in how firms overcome industry disruption to achieve breakthrough performance. Her recent work emphasizes innovation in the governance of technology to address global challenges. In recognition of her contributions, she was elected as a Fellow of the Strategic Management Society in 2012 and of the Academy of Management in 2015.

Professor McGahan is a past president of the Academy of Management, the largest and most prominent professional association of management and organization professors and PhD students, with nearly 20,000 international members. Since 2014, she has served on the faculty of the MacArthur Foundation’s Research Network on Opening Governance based at New York University. This network studies governance innovation in the public and private sectors. Professor McGahan has been a Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University since 2002. She is the Chief Economist in the Division of Health and Human Rights at the Massachusetts General Hospital. As Vice-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of Grand Challenges Canada, she participates in the international Grand Challenges community by supporting innovators that integrate science, technology, social and business innovation in low- and middle-income countries and in Canada. She is a Senior Fellow of the World Health Organization’s Collaborating Centre for Governance, Accountability and Transparency in the Pharmaceutical Sector, charged with conducting research, analysis, and training on critical issues related to good governance and transparency in medicines.

Professor McGahan has been recognized as an outstanding teacher for her dedication to the success of junior faculty, her leadership in course development, and her vision for the future of management education. In 2010, she was awarded the Academy of Management BPS Division’s Irwin Distinguished Educator Award. In 2012, the Academy of Management also conferred on Professor McGahan its Career Distinguished Educator Award for her championship of reform in the core curriculum of Business Schools. In 2018, Professor McGahan was awarded both the Inaugural Educational Impact Award and the Dan and Mary Lou Schendel Best Paper Prize from the Strategic Management Society. Professor McGahan earned both her MA and PhD at Harvard University in two years. She holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, where she received highest academic honours as a Baker Scholar, and a BA from Northwestern University. 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. She has been a Visiting Professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, the London Business School., the Australian Graduate School of Management, the University of Cambridge, and the Division of Social Medicine and Global Health at Harvard Medical School.