Award-winning Marketing professor Cait Lamberton on why she chose to teach at Wharton

The Wharton School recently hired award-winning professor Cait Lamberton from the University of Pittsburgh to teach in its Marketing Department.

Lamberton will serve as the inaugural Alberto I. Duran President’s Distinguished Professor in Wharton’s Marketing Department. Lamberton previously taught at the University of Pittsburgh for more than 10 years.

In 2015, Lamberton made Poets & Quants’ Top 40 Business School Professors under 40 list.  Lamberton placed third in Fortune’s Top 10 Business School Professors under 40 list in the same year.

Lamberton said the opportunity to work at Penn jumped out to her because of Wharton's vast resources, which will allow her to pursue risk management and consumer psychology.

“Something that I am really looking forward to is developing some really broad research programs,” Lamberton said. “The vast amount of resources at Penn allow you to study bigger and messier questions that are not possible in places where resources are more constrained.”

While Lamberton will be primarily teaching MBA and Ph.D. courses in the upcoming spring semester, Lamberton said she looks forward to teaching undergraduate courses in the future, possibly as soon as fall 2020.

“I am excited to teach undergrads because they are so open-minded and are interested in a lot of different topics, so we can explore a wide range of perspectives,” Lamberton said. “The fact that undergraduate students are bringing this wide range of interest makes [the course] a lot of fun.”

Lamberton initially received her bachelor's degree in English from Wheaton College, and she moved on to receive an MBA and Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of South Carolina. But Lamberton says she wasn't always set on the world of business.

“I was an English major in undergrad, and I love the English major because it exposed me to all different ways to live in the world,” Lamberton said.

Lamberton said she decided to study marketing and consumer psychology in graduate school because of the universal nature of the subjects.

“There is almost nothing in the world that we can talk about without talking about consumer psychology and marketing,” Lamberton said.

Wharton Vice Dean of Analytics Eric Bradlow said the Marketing Department has been looking for accomplished scholars and educators, which led to Lamberton's hiring.

“Cait’s name emerged from the top of that list. This list is based on publication record, teaching accomplishments, visibility and leadership in the field, record of working with Ph.D. students, and potential synergy with Wharton,” Bradlow said.

Lamberton said she enjoyed her time at the University of Pittsburgh because of the large proportion of first-generation students at the university, which, she said, “creates a very different kind of drive."

Even though she was only officially hired this summer, Lamberton has already heard from Penn students and is excited to begin teaching.

“Undergraduate students here at Penn have very big goals, and I have already gotten emails from students who are interested in starting their own companies,” Lamberton said.

Lamberton said the motivated nature of Penn's students presents an opportunity to work with ambitious students, while also posing a responsibility to guide these students through the learning process.

“It is wonderful to work with people with big ideas, but it is important to make sure that people pursue those things without undermining other aspects of life,” Lamberton said.

Bradlow said Lamberton is a future leader in the Marketing Department and Wharton as a whole.

“We felt that Cait had the potential to help us continually build our group, be a thought leader, excel in the classroom and training of Ph.D. students, and her work on technology and consumer marketing is a forward-looking and rapidly growing area of our field,” Bradlow added.