Our Advisory Board is formed by a group of global academic, social and industry leaders that support the management and the members of the Center by providing strategic advice and guidance on our work.

Members are appointed for a three year period and work with us in smaller sub-committees to support their areas of interest.

Robert Cialdini

Arizona State University Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing –  Arizona State University

President and CEO – INFLUENCE AT WORK

Dr. Cialdini is Regents’ Professor Emeritus of Psychology and Marketing at Arizona State University. He has held Visiting Scholar appointments at Ohio State University, the University of California, the Annenberg School of Communications, and the Graduate School of Business of Stanford University, and he was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences in 2018 and the National Academy of Sciences in 2019. He is the author the highly-acclaimed and groundbreaking book, Influence: Psychology of Persuasion. The book is a New York Times Business bestseller. Fortune Magazine lists Influence in their “75 Smartest Business Books.” CEO Read lists Influence in their “100 Best Business Books of All Time.” His books, including Influence and Pre-Suasion, have sold more than 7 million copies in 44 different languages. Harvard Business Review lists Dr. Robert Cialdini’s research in  “Breakthrough Ideas for Today’s Business Agenda.” He is a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today Best-Selling author.

Deborah A. Prentice

Provost and Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs – Princeton University

Deborah Prentice is a provost and Alexander Stewart 1886 Professor of Psychology and Public Affairs at Princeton University. Prior to becoming Provost on July 1, 2017, she served as the dean of the faculty from 2014-2017, chair of the Psychology Department for 12 years, and co-chair of the Trustee Ad Hoc Committee on Diversity. Debbie is a social psychologist whose research focuses on how beliefs and norms serve as catalysts for behavior stasis and change. Her pioneering work on pluralistic ignorance applied to college campus alcohol use is a foundation of numerous campus Alcohol education and bystander intervention programs.

Michael Hallsworth

Managing Director, North America – Behavioral Insights Team (BIT)

Assistant Professor – Columbia University

Michael Hallsworth is Managing Director, North America at the Behavioral Insights Team (BIT). BIT was set up by the then UK Prime Minister in 2010 as the first government institution dedicated to applying behavioral sciences. BIT is now a world-leading organization that helps organizations to apply behavioral science in support of social purpose goals. Michael has been a leading figure in developing the field of applying behavioral science to government. He is the author of the book Behavioral Insights (MIT Press, 2020) and has authored several influential frameworks such as the MINDSPACE and EAST reports. His work has been published in, among others, the Journal of Public Economics, The Lancet, The Oxford Review of Economic Policy, and Nature Human Behaviour. Michael has a PhD in behavioral economics from Imperial College London and is an Assistant Professor (Adjunct) at Columbia University.

Matt Lasmanis

Chief Technology and Innovation Officer – Sage Therapeutics

Matt Lasmanis, Chief Technology & Innovation Officer at Sage Therapeutics, is an award winning digital and biotechnology executive. At Sage, Matt leads the company’s overall digital vision, strategy, and transformation and heads Sage’s enterprise-wide innovation, data, analytics, and technology capabilities. Matt was previously at GlaxoSmithKline where he served as Vice President and CIO for GSK’s $10B US affiliate and held global leadership roles of increasing responsibility in the areas of Oncology, Biopharmaceuticals, and Research & Development. Before GSK, Matt led the digital platforms team at HarperCollins Publishers. An active thought leader and speaker, Matt regularly shares his perspectives on digital transformation and strategic leadership with global and local audiences and is the recipient of several industry leadership awards, including the CIO 100. He serves on the board of the Center for Social Norms and Behavioral Dynamics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Alessandra Smerilli

Secretary of the Dicastery for Promoting Integral Human Development – Vatican State

Sr. Alessandra Smerilli, FMA, is a religious sister in the Salesian tradition. Since 2014, she is a Full Professor of Economics at PFSE-Auxilium, a Vatican University in Rome. She is also a lecturer at the Pontifical Lateran University. In 2019, Sr Alessandra was the first woman in history appointed as Advisor to Vatican State by Pope Francesco. She is the author of various books and articles in behavioral economics, economic theory of values-based organizations, we-rationality, and team reasoning. She is the founder and member of the scientific committee of SEC (Scuola di Economia Civile, School of Civil Economy), member of “Consiglio Nazionale del Terzo settore” since 2018 and member of “Comitato scientifico e organizzativo delle Settimane Sociali dei Cattolici”, (Scientific Committee for Social Weeks of Catholics), promoted by Bishop Italian Conference (C.E.I.), since 2008. Currently she is also serving as Coordinator of the Economy Task force at the Vatican Covid-19 Commission established by Pope Francis in March 2020. 

H. Peyton Young

James Meade Professor of Economics Emeritus – University of Oxford

Centennial Professor – London School of Economics

Research Principal, Office of Financial Research – United States Department of the Treasury

Peyton Young is James Meade Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Oxford, Centennial Professor at the London School of Economics, and a Research Principal at the Office of Financial Research, United States Department of the Treasury. His research is concerned with game theory and its applications to the evolution of social norms and institutions, the diffusion of innovations, voting and representation, and finance. He is a Fellow of the British Academy, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and the Econometric Society, and is a former President of the Game Theory Society.

Guy Grossman

Professor, Political Science Department – University of Pennsylvania

Guy Grossman is a Professor of Political Science at the University of Pennsylvania. His research is in applied political economy, with substantive focus on the intersection of technology and governance, political accountability, forced migration and conflict processes, and a regional focus on sub-Saharan Africa and Israel-Palestine. Prof. Grossman is the founder and co-director of Penn’s Development Research Initiative (PDRI), a member of the Evidence in Governance and Politics (EGAP) network, and faculty affiliate of Stanford’s Immigration Policy Lab (IPL), Penn’s Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration (CSERI) and Penn’s Identity & Conflict (PIC) Lab. Prof. Grossman designed and carried out field studies in sites in a large number of developing countries, in collaboration with various international agencies, including the World Bank, the UK Department for International Development, the US Agency for International Development, as well as with African governments and local non-governmental organizations. 

Saadi Lahlou

Director – Paris Institute for Advanced Study

Chair in Social Psychology – London School of Economics

Saadi Lahlou is a social psychologist with 25+ years of experience of management in Industry, Research and Government. He has directed 5 research units: the Department of Consumer Science at Crédoc, the Research group on Sociology of Organizations at Electricité de France, the Laboratory of Design for Cognition at EDF R&D, the Department of Social Psychology at LSE (which has since become the Department of Psychological and Behavioral Science), and currently the Paris Institute for Advanced Study. He also directed the doctoral programme in Social Psychology at LSE for 6 years, and was a member of the steering committee of the Commissariat general du Plan (French Prime Minister’s forecast and planning unit). Saadi also has been a consultant for global corporations in several sectors, chaired national research programme and evaluated many others, is a member of scientific advisory bords in several top universities and large industries. In his most recent book, he presents Installation Theory, a framework to analyse behaviour and change it, that helps redesign businesses to become more sustainable.

Madhu Krishna

Deputy Director, Water, Sanitation & Hygiene and Gender Equality, India Country Office – Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation

Madhu Krishna is a Deputy Director in the Global Growth and Opportunity Division and leads the foundation’s India initiative on Water, Sanitation and Hygiene and oversees the Gender Equality portfolio in the India office. She manages and supervises a large number of investments under these portfolios, and bringing them together for sectoral impact, working across technical solutions, policy and advocacy, strategic communications, community engagement and field implementation at scale of proven interventions. She brings with her a diversity of experience in a wide range of fields including private, public and nonprofit sector work. She has been a development professional for over 25 years, with a special focus on program design, evaluation, policy and advocacy across various initiatives, including sanitation, public health (vaccines, maternal and child health, communicable diseases), agriculture / poverty and livelihood, and women’s empowerment. She is deeply interested in gender and social and economic equity.

Renos Vakis

Head of the Mind, Behavioral and Development Unit (eMBeD) – The World Bank

Renos Vakis is a Lead Economist with the Poverty and Equity Global Practice where he leads the Mind, Behavior, and Development Unit (eMBeD). The unit integrates behavioral science in the design of anti-poverty policies in a wide range of issues such as financial inclusion, social cohesion, human development and employment. As a member of the Living Standards Measurement Study (LSMS) team in the Development Data Group of the World Bank, he also conducts experiments to improve household survey measures of behavioral dimensions of well-being. He has written extensively on issues related to poverty dynamics and mobility, aspirations, mental well-being and social protection and has led numerous randomized trials on a range of anti-poverty interventions in various settings. Renos has also taught economics at Johns Hopkins University (SAIS). He holds a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Emanuele Ciriolo

Head of the Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights – European Commission

Emanuele Ciriolo is the Head of the Competence Centre on Behavioural Insights at the European Commission. Since 2007, when he joined the Commission, Emanuele has been applying behavioural insights in policymaking, as a complement to other traditional approaches. His work has resulted in several Commission services using behavioural evidence in concrete policy initiatives, such as the ban of pre-checked boxes for ancillary services in online contracts, the adoption of energy labelling for electrical appliances, and the EC Recommendation on Online Gambling. He holds a BA in Economics, an MSc in Regional and Urban Planning (LSE), and an MSc in Economics and Statistics (ECARES, Brussels).

Youssef Nassef

Director of the Adaptation Division, United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change

Chair, World Adaptation Science Programme

Youssef Nassef has led the adaptation workstreams under the UNFCCC since their inception. He possesses over 30 years of experience in diplomacy and international environmental policy, and is a seconded diplomat from the Egyptian Foreign Service. While assuming progressively higher levels of leadership at the UNFCCC, he led UNFCCC support for several initiatives on adaptation. These include the inception and support for National Adaptation Programmes of Action and National Adaptation Plans; the Nairobi Work Programme – an international knowledge hub for impacts, vulnerability and adaptation; and the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage. He recently created the Resilience Frontiers initiative which applies foresight for attaining post-2030 resilience. He holds a PhD in International Technology Policy and Management and a MALD in International Environmental Policy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, as well as a MA in Middle East Studies and a BSc in Computer Science and Physics from the American University in Cairo.

Jacqueline Coyle-Shapiro 

Professor in Organizational Behavior, London School of Economics

Past President, Academy of Management

Jacqueline A-M. Coyle-Shapiro is a Professor in Organizational Behavior at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). She studies psychological contracts, employment relationships and health, and social impact in poverty settings. Her work appears in journals, including Academy of Management Journal and Journal of Applied Psychology, among others. She is currently the Past President of the Academy of Management.

Jan Willem Rosenboom 

Sr. Program Officer at the Water, Sanitation & Hygiene Team – Global Growth & Opportunity Division, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Jan Willem Rosenboom has been a senior member of the Bill & Melinda Gates foundation’s Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WSH) team since 2010, contributing to the delivery of a transformative sanitation strategy to help shift sector priorities towards inclusive, sustainable and safely managed sanitation services, delivered at scale. In managing a substantial and diverse grant portfolio, Jan Willem partners with a large number of local, bilateral, academic and multilateral organizations, supporting efforts in market research and market making, behavior change and social norms, service delivery, policy development, business model development and understanding climate change and resilient services. Jan Willem is a Tropical Public Health Engineer by traning, receiving his Master’s Degree from the University of Leeds (UK) in 1992. He has over thirty years of experience in international development, managing WaSH country programs for Oxfam, WaterAid, UNICEF and the World Bank among others. Jan Willem has lived and worked in The Netherlands, Kenya, Sierra Leone, United Kingdom, Cambodia, Bangladesh and the USA. He currently lives on Bainbridge Island with his wife and adult daughter.

Antanas Mockus 

Former Mayor of Bogota (Colombia)

Former Senator of the Republic of Colombia

Former President of the National University of Colombia

Antanas Mockus is a Colombian mathematician, philosopher, and politician. He was President of the National University of Colombia (1990-1993), Mayor of Bogota (1995-1997 and 2001 and 2003) and Senator of the Republic of Colombia (2018-2020). During his two times as Mayor, he applied creative interventions based on the “Cultura Ciudadana” (Civic Culture) approach he created to address some of Bogotá’s problems, including hiring mimes to control traffic and make fun of traffic violators. Under his leadership, Bogotá saw remarkable improvement across the board–water usage dropped 40%, 7000 community security groups were formed and the homicide rate fell 70%, traffic fatalities dropped by over 50%, drinking water was provided to all homes (up from 79% in 1993), and sewage was provided to 95% of homes (up from 71%). He has been a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and holds a BA in Mathematics from the University of Burgundy, an MA in Philosophy from the National University of Colombia, and Honoris Causa PhDs from the National University of Colombia and the Sorbonne Paris North University.

Irene Tinagli 

Member of the European Parliament, Chair of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs

After graduating in Management at L. Bocconi University, she obtained a Master of Science and a PhD in Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, specializing in economics of innovation and regional development. She has been a consultant for the United Nations, the European Commission and numerous national and regional governments on issues relating to innovation policies, regional and urban economic development and attractiveness. In 2010 she was appointed Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. She has been assistant professor of Management at Carlos III University of Madrid since 2009 until her election to the Italian Chamber of Deputies in 2013, where she served a 5 years mandate. In May 2019 she was elected to the European Parliament and in September 2019 she was appointed Chair of the Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs. She has been a columnist for the newspaper La Stampa and has published several books including: Talento da Svendere (Einaudi, 2008), Un Futuro a Colori (Rizzoli, 2014), La Grande Ignoranza (Rizzoli, 2019).

Jim Guszcza

Research Affiliate, Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences

Former U.S. Chief Data Scientist, Deloitte

Jim Guszcza is a Research Affiliate at Stanford’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, co-leading a project on human-centered AI. Jim has worked as data scientist for over two decades, and is the first person to be designated Deloitte’s U.S. Chief Data Scientist. He is a former professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison business school, holds a PhD in philosophy from The University of Chicago, and is a Fellow of the Casualty Actuarial Society. Jim serves on the scientific advisory board of the Psychology of Technology Institute. Jim was a 2020-21 Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Lucrezia Reichlin

Professor of Economics, London Business School

Trustee, Center of European Policy Research (CEPR) and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS)

Lucrezia Reichlin is Professor of Economics at the London Business School, a trustee of the Center of European Policy Research (CEPR) and of the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). Reichlin is an applied macroeconomist and econometrician. She has pioneered methods for forecasting with large datasets and for now-casting. She is a Fellow of the British Academy and of the Econometric Society and she is honorary International Fellow of the American Economic Association. Reichlin was Director General of Research at the ECB from 2005 to 2008 and she co-founded Now-Casting Economics in 2011. She is a member of a few commercial boards and research institutes and advises central banks and governments on issues related to macroeconomy policy and the financial sector.