Sheena Iyengar

Sheena S. Iyengar is a Canadian born academic who is the S.T. Lee Professor of Business and Chair of The Management Department at Columbia Business School, and founder of a startup called Think Bigger Innovation. She is best known as an expert on choice, particularly for her "Jam Study." Her research focuses on the many facets of decision making, including: why people want choice, what affects how and what people choose, and how decision making can be improved. She has presented TED talks on choice with over 7 million views and is the author of The Art of Choosing and Think Bigger: How To Innovate (2023). She is the recipient of numerous honors, including two Axiom Business Book Awards and The Thinkers50 Innovation award.

Early life and education Iyengar was born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. India. In 1992, she graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in economics from the Wharton School and a BA in psychology from the College of Arts and Sciences. She then earned her PhD in Social Psychology from Stanford University in 1997.

Career Iyengar's first faculty appointment was at the Sloan School of Management at MIT from July 1997 to June 1998. She has authored or coauthored over 30 journal articles. including by Bloomberg Business Week, CityLab, Money Magazine, The New York Times, Media appearances include The Diane Rehm Show (NPR) and Marketplace (APM).

Iyengar was the recipient of the 2001 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers for, as the NSF said, "helping lead to a better understanding of how cultural, individual, and situational dimensions of human decision-making can be used to improve people's lives." In 2011, Iyengar was named a member of the Thinkers50, In 2012, she was awarded the Dean's Award for Outstanding Core Teaching from Columbia Business School.

Non-academic works

Iyengar has written non-academic articles, including for CNN and Slate, and book chapters. and was shortlisted for the 2010 Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. In the Afterword of the 2011 edition of The Art of Choosing, Iyengar distills one aspect of her work explaining and advocating for choice, arguing for people to take responsibility for their lives and not rely on a supposed fate determined by some "greater force out there." that embeds AI into ideation and choice mapping in a product that helps businesses solve complex problems and innovate.

Personal life Iyengar is divorced from Garud Iyengar, another Columbia University professor, with whom she has one child.