Marking a milestone for American University and the Change Can’t Wait Campaign, Professor Sonya A. Grier was installed as the Arlene R. and Robert P. Kogod Eminent Scholar Chair in Marketing on Thursday, November 30.
This installation was the first to honor three positions in the Kogod School of Business made possible by a transformational $15 million campaign gift from the Kogod family and the fourth endowed faculty position installed through Change Can’t Wait.
President Sylvia Burwell thanked the Kogod family for their incredible legacy of support to American University. “While that gift alone is extraordinary,” stated President Burwell, “what is even more extraordinary is the fact that Bob and Arlene have been giving AU continuous support and leadership for four decades, including Bob’s service on the board [of trustees] from 1978 to 1993.”
Sonya Grier is a renowned expert in the field of marketing who seeks to enhance consumer well-being through her changemaking work. Grier’s expertise spans issues of race, diversity, and equity in a variety of market domains at the intersection of business and society. She examines the racial dynamics underlying marketing issues in neighborhood gentrification, digital marketing to youth of color, and targeted food marketing, with a particular focus on the impact marketing practices have on health disparities.
Grier’s scholarship—once considered radical—is today sought after by every business school in the US. “Her expertise on inclusive marketing and the ways it can drive change on individual, community, and societal levels is unparalleled,” stated President Burwell.
More than one hundred university leaders, members of the Board of Trustees, colleagues, students, family, and friends gathered in the Abramson Recital Hall in the Katzen Art Center for the ceremony. Following customary tradition, Grier led her first lecture as chairholder after the official installation.
Titled "Back to the Future," Grier shared an image of the Sankofa—a mythical Ghanian bird of the Akan people. With its forward pointed feet and backwards facing head, the Sankofa symbolizes the importance of learning from the past to ensure a strong future. Grier then took the audience through an evolution of nearly 30 years of her research, noting “We cannot know where we are going if we don’t know where we’ve come from.”
Grier cited a pivotal experience she encountered as a teen after answering a local newspaper ad to buy her first car. When she and her grandfather arrived to look at the 1966 Camero, they were abruptly told it had been sold, even though the car was in plain sight. As she and her grandfather turned away, Grier overheard the sellers making racist remarks.
Some years later while an MBA student, Grier noticed the lack of diversity within her class and the cases she was studying. With one of her peers, she developed a successful marketing plan that grew her program in two years to one of the largest cohorts of Black doctoral students in the US—demonstrating research as a spark for necessary social change.
People of color receive higher surveillance, discrimination and disrespect, higher prices for lower quality products and services, and constrained access to basic necessities across all types of marketplaces. Grier’s research aims to identify how these practices can be designed to improve marketplace equity.
“It is a fundamental misperception to view race and diversity as risky topics when these are central issues to social sustainability. We all have a place in making the choices that will become the history of tomorrow—that’s back to the future,” said Professor Grier.
A tradition that dates back millennia, endowed chair positions are one of the highest honors a university can bestow upon its faculty in recognition of their remarkable achievements. Chaired positions are essential to AU’s future, as they help the university attract and retain prominent faculty and drive changemaking work in perpetuity.
“[Sonya] literally created a new field in consumer research. She has built a path for scholars who think like her, and look like her,” stated Dave Marchick, dean of the Kogod School of Business.
Acting Provost and Chief Academic Officer Dean Vicky Wilkins added, “Professor Grier is a builder . . . she has shattered the glass ceiling.”
Professor Grier left the audience with one request—to share new knowledge about race in the marketplace with others. “Discussion and awareness around race is an important building block to make the changes toward a more equitable society."
Watch 60 Seconds with an AU Expert on Race in the Marketplace and Social Impact of Marketing to learn more about Professor Grier's changemaking research.
