---
id: "pisquared:interview/bermiss-sekou"
type: "Pi-Squared interview"
title: "Anita McGahan in conversation with Sekou Bermiss"
url: "https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/bermiss-sekou"
date: "2026-04-21"
people: ["Anita McGahan","Sekou Bermiss"]
summary: "Sekou Bermiss is Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. His research examines how strategic human capital..."
recording: "https://vimeo.com/1185224589"
source: "Pi-Squared (pisquared.theburnescenter.org), The Burnes Center for Social Change"
licence: "none stated"
---

# Anita McGahan in conversation with Sekou Bermiss

Sekou Bermiss, Associate Professor, University of North Carolina Kenan-Flagler Business School · 21 April 2026

## About the guest

Sekou Bermiss is Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina’s Kenan-Flagler Business School. His research examines how strategic human capital shapes firm performance, innovation and organizational outcomes. He also studies how political ideology, status and diversity influence organizational decision-making and stakeholder reactions. His work has been published in leading journals, and has been featured by Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, The Wall Street Journal and National Public Radio. Sekou is a research fellow at the Kenan-Institute of Private Enterprise and an international research fellow at the Oxford University Centre for Corporate Reputation. Before academics, Sekou worked for Deloitte Consulting in New York City. He received his PhD and MS in management and organizations from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, and his BS in chemical engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

## Reflections from the interview

Anita spoke with **Sekou Bermiss**, Associate Professor at UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School, whose research focuses on strategic human capital, political ideology, diversity, and organizational behavior.

**On Strategic Human Capital** Bermiss traces his research interests to his time at Kellogg, where classical macro theories of organizations felt incomplete to him because they didn't adequately account for the heterogeneity and behavior of actual people. His early instinct that "people matter" eventually crystallized into what is now called the strategic human capital field. Over time, his focus has shifted from purely functional knowledge (skills, expertise) toward the more sociological and behavioral dimensions of human capital — how ideology, status, and demographic differences shape organizational dynamics and decision-making.

**On Political Ideology in Organizations** He began studying political ideology in the workplace about a decade ago, recognizing that how people see justice and fairness bleeds into professional settings. He draws a parallel to where diversity research was years ago.  The field has documented the effects of ideological differences and is now trying to understand how to manage or transcend them. He notes that "contact theory" (bringing people of differing views together) can go either way: it sometimes humanizes the other, and sometimes intensifies friction. He is currently working on a theory paper modeling when ideological differences in organizations lead to good versus bad outcomes.

**On Diversity Research** Bermiss came to diversity research relatively recently, motivated by a sense that public debates rely on outdated assumptions and that policymakers and practitioners are drawing conclusions from headlines rather than rigorous evidence. His goal is to introduce nuance — not to prove diversity is "always good" or "always bad," but to identify the conditions, contexts, and mechanisms that matter.

**On Founders vs. Executives** He discusses how new ventures are far more deeply imprinted by their founders than large corporations are by their current CEOs, because established organizations have institutionalized values and structures that buffer against individual influence. Through work with a former PhD student (Christopher Law now at Texas A&M), he explored how early micro-decisions by founding teams set the stage for organizational culture, a question that surprisingly hadn't been studied in depth. The Walmart example comes up as a case of founder values that cast a long cultural shadow, some of which the company later had to reckon with as societal values shifted.

**On Measurement and Analytics** With his background in chemical engineering, Bermiss has circled back to quantitative measurement. He notes that AI and new data tools are enabling organizations to measure things previously unquantifiable such as organizational anxiety, tracked through communication and meeting data. He's more interested in the downstream question: *should* we measure these things, and what happens to decision-making once managers have access to information they never had before?

**On Future Research** His current agenda includes continuing senior-level diversity research, studying CEO succession and turnover (pulled in by a student's interests), and a new stream on **temporary organizations** — how project-based entities assemble and manage human capital without the luxury of long hiring timelines or deep institutional knowledge. He sees this as increasingly relevant as megaprojects replace large permanent agencies.

**On Motivation** He closes by reflecting that academia offers something rare: the ability to step back from the "shiny new thing" and ask whether changes are real and lasting. He sees a growing appetite among students and executives for deep, slow, reliable knowledge — and that's what keeps him going.

## Related resources

- [Sekou’s website at UNC](https://www.kenan-flagler.unc.edu/faculty/directory/sekou-bermiss/)
- [Google Scholar on Sekou](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=7rcd8YUAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)
- [Sekou’s paper on how joiners become founders, and what happens next](https://sms.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1002/smj.3705)
- [Sekou’s paper on human capital mobility](https://link.springer.com/rwe/10.1007/978-3-031-81653-6_222)
- [Sekou’s paper on diversity and firm financial performance](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41996-023-00132-0)

## Recording

Video: https://vimeo.com/1185224589

## Category

[Where Do We Go From Here?](https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/category/where-next)

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Original page: https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/bermiss-sekou · Licence: none stated