Rita Gunther McGrath

Life and work

In 1967, McGrath and her family moved from Connecticut to New York. McGrath graduated with a degree in Political Science, with magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa honors, from Barnard College in 1981 and earned a Master of Public Administration from the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University in 1982. After graduating, McGrath founded two businesses, before accepting a job focused on digital transformation.

In 1993, she completed her Ph.D. at The Wharton School (University of Pennsylvania) with a dissertation entitled Developing New Competence in Established Organizations. Whilst at Wharton, she won the Kauffman Foundation Fellowship in Entrepreneurship and published six peer-reviewed articles.

After graduating in 1993, McGrath joined Columbia as an Assistant Professor of Management. In 1998, she was promoted to Associate Professor of Management, and later, she became a full Professor in the Faculty of Executive Education. In 2009, she was elected Fellow of the Strategic Management Society, and in 2014 she was elected the Deputy Dean of their Fellows.

At Columbia, she directs the course: 'Leading Strategic Growth and Change', as well as guest-lectures in a number of other courses. She is involved in other Columbia initiatives such as the Think Bigger Innovation Hub and custom program offerings.

In 2013, she was elected Fellow of the International Academy of Management. McGrath is also the founder of the innovation platform Valize, and is a regular contributor to the Harvard Business Review and the MIT Sloan Management Review.