Sonya Grier and a Kogod student present at the annual MEA Conference

For AU Marketing Professor Sonya Grier, the only way to understand a problem is to examine multiple perspectives. "An interdisciplinary approach is essential," Grier says. "To truly understand an issue, you must consider how different people see it.”

Grier, a proponent of marketing for social good, believes that by integrating different viewpoints, people better understand the factors contributing to a problem. Through this holistic approach, better solutions are reached and more impactful change in society is made. An avid food and health market researcher, Grier explains that when researching issues such as obesity, she must consider many questions. Why does a store sell specific products in a neighborhood? Why is a company targeting a particular demographic group?

“It’s too simple to assume there’s an obesity problem in the US because people eat too much, or don’t exercise enough,” Grier says. “There is never just one factor.”

Focusing on consumer health research also provides an outlet to investigate another area of interest for Grier: race. While she has long been fascinated with the intersection of race and marketing, it was not always a research priority in the field. Looking at health issues through a racial lens allowed Grier to investigate this interest area, and improve its validity as a research topic.

For a long time, race was not emphasized in marketing,” Grier says. “With issues like immigration and shifting demographics becoming more and more important, people see the need to focus on race in the health field. Health gave me the opportunity to focus on race within marketing.”

The recent Flint, Michigan, water crises is a prime example of why factoring race into health marketing is so crucial. When Flint residents, who are primarily African-American and low-income, learned their drinking water was contaminated with lead, it was clear that where they lived impacted their health. A less obvious —but just as important—factor was their race. Because a person’s race influenced where they lived in the city, it also determined if they drank the contaminated water.

Grier hopes that by fostering an understanding of race in marketing, she can help avoid such future crises. “I want to influence peoples’ perceptions and behaviors for the betterment of society,” she says. “What messages can we send to encourage harmonious racial relationships? How can we connect this to people’s overall health? These are the types of things I study.”

Grier’s interdisciplinary health research is not enough for her, though. She believes to truly affect change, she must integrate it into her teaching as well.

“Approaching issues from different disciplines is something we don’t always do with our students, especially in the business school,” Grier explains. “I want to bring students different, important perspectives that they’ll encounter out in the real world.

One way she integrates different viewpoints in the classroom is by assigning students interdisciplinary projects. In one of her recent social marketing classes, Grier asked students to develop marketing plans that facilitated inclusion on campus. Staff members from the admissions and financial aid offices, center for diversity and inclusion, and office of the provost presented to the class, helping students consider inclusion from different angles.

Groups then selected a different on-campus problem, such as gender issues or racial segregation in clubs, and strategized how to best address it. “These projects affected students so personally because they were connected to the campus community. To take what they learned in class and apply it directly to their daily lives—that’s impact,” Grier enthuses.

Despite its rewards, Grier admits interdisciplinary research and teaching presents its challenges. A major barrier is the additional time and effort this approach requires. In order to understand different fields, Grier must attend multiple conferences and read across disciplines—each with its own language and jargon.

“Oftentimes you move faster if you’re just focused on one field, because everyone’s thinking the same,” Grier says. “When you’re trying to create something new that melds different views—that’s a whole other thing. There’s learning and integration that happens, and issues you have to work through.”

The extra work is worth every ounce of effort, though. Grier is not only helping develop better solutions to problems, but advancing the field as a whole. “I don’t just do this work for myself—I do it for everyone conducting interdisciplinary research,” she says. “In this way, I hope to encourage the interdisciplinary approach in the marketing field.”

Most of all, Grier hopes that by continuing to integrate different perspectives into her research and teaching, she will help discover powerful solutions to society’s problems. “It’s really an issue of opening people’s minds to different viewpoints,” she says. “It’s this interdisciplinary perspective that allows you to develop solutions that will make society a better place.”

Social entrepreneurship is about people starting any initiative that has a social, environmental, or community objective.

Siri Terjesen believes social enterprises are a catalyst for change. "There are so many problems in the world, and we can't rely on governments to solve them all. Private social businesses inspire people to find solutions themselves."

Terjesen first became interested in the topic of social entrepreneurship while writing a case study on a social venture in Chennai, India. The World Bank-sponsored project developed a device to more effectively capture rats that were destroying the city’s crops. Ultimately, it transformed the lives of the Irula people, an indigenous agricultural tribe, by instituting a healthier and more efficient way to catch the rodents.

"Social entrepreneurship is about people starting any initiative that has a social, environmental, or community objective," Terjesen explains. "It could be students who are starting a product that’s based on recycled materials. Or a group working to find a solution to irrigation problems in their neighborhood."

Terjesen’s experiences in India got her thinking. If such an impactful project existed in just one city of a country, how many people were running social ventures globally?

The Global Entrepreneurship Monitor’s (GEM) Social Entrepreneurship Report, set to release in early June 2016, seeks to answer this question. As a co-researcher on the project, Terjesen assisted in developing a survey that determined the number and type of social entrepreneurs in different populations. The report polled 167,793 adults in 58 countries, making it the largest comparative research study of social entrepreneurship in the world.

"The majority of social entrepreneurship research is case-based, meaning it's just one study about a particular business and place," says Terjesen "This report looks at a lot of populations, which allows us to collect data that represents many different people."

GEM, a membership organization dedicated to entrepreneurship research, supported the study by allowing Terjesen to utilize their international network of nearly 90 countries. She and her colleagues Niels Bosma, Thomas Schøtt, and Penny Kew worked with GEM to interview random populations from different countries by phone or face-to-face. “This report is only possible through GEM’s extensive global network,” she says.

Because the report surveyed a large number of people in many countries, Terjesen and her co-authors had to be very strategic about which questions were included. “Every question costs money, so you have to have a really good reason for including anything. If you don’t have a complete rationale, you might be spending money asking something that you’re not even getting the right answer for,” she says.

The report’s conclusions have important implications for entrepreneurs, researchers, and policy-makers alike. About 3.2% of the world’s population is starting social ventures, with 5.75% of the total US population involved in social start-ups. This indicates a substantial amount of the global population are social entrepreneurs, validating this as an important topic for researchers and policy-makers.

The report also uncovered an important statistic on women in business. In commercial entrepreneurship, men outnumber women 2:1, especially in developed countries like the United States. In social ventures, both genders are almost equally represented, suggesting that social entrepreneurship is a top business field of interest for women worldwide.

"This is important research that I hope others will investigate, too. It can influence policy makers by showing them what populations of social entrepreneurs look like. In this way, it has the potential to make a very large impact globally," Terjesen says.

Terjesen will join Kogod this fall as an Associate Professor and the Research Director of AU’s new Center for Innovation in the Capital. She will help develop the Center through her entrepreneurship research and expertise. “We couldn’t be more thrilled Terjesen is joining our faculty,” says Melissa Bradley, Director of the Innovation Center. “Having a tenured professor with her research and teaching experience is a great asset to AU.

Terjesen is also excited to join the Center’s faculty, and the AU community as a whole. “I’ve always admired American University. I’ve already had several interactions with students, and have been really impressed with how entrepreneurial they are,” she enthuses.

Most of all, Terjesen is enthusiastic about supporting social ventures with her work. Through her continued research at AU and beyond, she will help define, grow, and advance the social entrepreneurship sector.

“I love to make a difference,” Terjesen says. “I want to continue providing rigorous, impactful research that’s relevant to the world.”

Click here to learn more about the AU Center for Innovation in the Capital.