Sunita Sah

Dr Sunita Sah is an award-winning, tenured professor at Cornell University and a leading expert in organisational psychology. A trained physician, she practiced medicine in the United Kingdom and worked as a management consultant for the pharmaceutical industry.

Sah’s research centers on influence and advice, exploring critical themes such as trust, advisor-advisee dynamics, conflicts of interest, institutional corruption, transparency, disclosure, decision-making, employee voice, burnout, compliance, and defiance. Employing a multi-method approach that combines laboratory and field experiments, qualitative analysis, and large real-world archival data, Sah integrates insights from organisational behaviour, psychology, and behavioral economics to deepen understanding of the complexities inherent in speaking up within professional and personal contexts.

Sah has served as a commissioner on the National Commission of Forensic Science and contributed to the Human Factors Committee of the National Institute of Standards and Technology Forensic Science Standards Board. She currently holds advisory roles with the American College Center for Ethics in Financial Services, the editorial board of the Behavioural Public Policy Journal, the scientific advisory board of the Behavioral Economics in Health Network, and serves as an officer at the International Behavioural Public Policy Association.

Sah’s research has also been widely covered in leading media outlets such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Nature, BBC, Financial Times, The Guardian, Forbes, Bloomberg, as well as on television networks including BBC World and CNN.

Sah holds a PhD and MS in organisational behavior from Carnegie Mellon University, an MBA with distinction from London Business School, an MB ChB (UK equivalent to the US MD) in medicine and surgery, and a BSc (Hons) in psychology from the University of Edinburgh.