Prof. CB Bhattacharya PhD, MA, MBA

CB Bhattacharya is the Director of the Center for Sustainable Business and the H.J. Zoffer Chair in Sustainability and Ethics at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh. He is a world-renowned expert in business strategy innovation aimed at increasing both business and social value. His research and teaching focuses specifically on how companies can use underleveraged “intangible assets” such as corporate identity, reputation, corporate social responsibility and sustainability to strengthen stakeholder relationships and drive firm market value.

Prof. Bhattacharya has published over 100 articles and has over 43,000 citations per Google Scholar. His latest book entitled Small Actions Big Difference: Leveraging Corporate Sustainability to Drive Business and Societal Value was published by Routledge in 2019.  He is co-author of the book Leveraging Corporate Responsibility: The Stakeholder Route to Maximizing Business and Social Value and co-editor of the book Global Challenges in Responsible Business, both published by Cambridge University Press. He has served on the Editorial Review Boards and served as Editor of special issues of many leading international publications. Prof. Bhattacharya is the founder of the Center for Sustainable Business at the University of Pittsburgh as well as the ESMT Berlin Sustainable Business Roundtable, a forum with more than 25 multinational companies, aimed at discussing opportunities and challenges in mainstreaming sustainability practices within organizations. In 2007 he started the Stakeholder Marketing Consortium with support from the Aspen Institute.

Prof. Bhattacharya is part of a select group of faculty that has been named twice to Business Week’s Outstanding Faculty list. He is one of the top 50 cited marketing scholars per Google Scholar and ranks among the top 1% of marketing scholars in citations per a Stanford University study. He has won several best paper awards, teaching awards and research prizes, including the Steenkamp Award for long term research impact. He was also a finalist for the Aspen Institute’s Faculty Pioneer Award in 2007. In addition, he received the Emory Williams Distinguished Teaching Award in 1995, the highest teaching award at Emory University.

He received his PhD in Marketing from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania in 1993, his MBA from the Indian Institute of Management in 1984 and his Bachelors (with Honors in Economics) from St. Stephens College, Delhi in 1982. Before joining ESMT in 2009, he was the Everett W. Lord Distinguished Scholar and Professor of Marketing at the School of Management at Boston University. Before joining Boston University, he was on the faculty at the Goizueta Business School, Emory University. Prior to his PhD, he worked for three years as a Product Manager in Reckitt Benckiser plc.

Prof. Bhattacharya has conducted research and consulted for many organizations such as Allianz, AT&T, Bosch, Eli Lilly, ENEL, E.ON, General Mills, Green Mountain Coffee, High Museum of Art, Hitachi Corporation, Procter & Gamble Company, Prudential Bank, Timberland, Unilever and Yum! Brands. As an expert in corporate responsibility and sustainability, he is often interviewed and quoted in publications such as Business Week, BBC, Forbes, Financial Times, Newsweek, The New York Times and The Economist and on TV stations such as Times Now, CBS and PBS. He frequently delivers keynote speeches or brings in his insights as a panelist at company, industry, and academic conferences and conventions.