Gita Johar

Gita V. Johar (PhD NYU 1993; MBA Indian Institute of Management Calcutta 1985) has been on the faculty of Columbia Business School since 1992 and is currently the Meyer Feldberg Professor of Business. Professor Johar received the Distinguished Alumnus award from IIMC in 2019. She served as the school’s inaugural Vice Dean for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion from 2019 to 2021, Faculty Director of Online Initiatives from 2014 to 2017, Senior Vice Dean from 2011 to 2014, and as the inaugural Vice Dean for Research from 2010 to 2011. She received the Service to the Doctoral Program Award from the school in 2023. At the university, Professor Johar served as Chair of the Faculty Steering Committee for the Columbia Global Centers | South Asia in Mumbai from 2015 to 2019 and currently serves on the Provost’s Advisory Council for the Enhancement of Faculty Diversity. Professor Johar received Columbia University’s Faculty Service Award in 2024. 

Professor Johar served as co-editor of the premier academic journal on consumer behavior, the Journal of Consumer Research from July 2014 to December 2017 and co-edited a 2021 Special Issue of the Journal of Marketing on Better Marketing for a Better World (BMBW). She co-founded the BMBW (www.bmbw.org) initiative that aims to inspire research in this area. She also served as President of the Society for Consumer Psychology from 2022-2023. Professor Johar currently serves on the Board of Advisors at Asia Initiatives, a nonprofit based in New York. She is also a member of the Morgan Stanley Institute for Inclusion Advisory Board.

Professor Johar's expertise lies in consumer psychology, focusing on consumer identity, beliefs, motivation, and persuasion as they relate to branding, advertising, and media and she has published widely in these areas. Her current research examines consumer interactions with technology, aims to understand and mitigate the effects of misinformation, and studies how to use psychological principles to inspire consumers to combat climate change. She received the 2025 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group of the American Marketing Association in (AMA CBSIG). 

In addition to teaching core marketing classes, Professor Johar has developed and taught electives on design thinking (Innovate using Design Thinking) and social innovation (Data Driven Design for Social Innovation), and she has written cases on consumer adoption of new products and on marketing and advertising planning. She has also taught courses on Advertising and Branding, Global Immersion: India, Global Immersion: Myanmar, Research Methods, and Consumer Behavior to MBA, Executive MBA, and PhD students.