---
id: "pisquared:interview/pamphile-voni"
type: "Pi-Squared interview"
title: "Anita McGahan in conversation with Voni Pamphile"
url: "https://pisquared.theburnescenter.org/interviews/pamphile-voni"
date: "2026-07-07"
people: ["Anita McGahan","Voni Pamphile"]
summary: "Voni Pamphile is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy at the George Washington University School of Business. She studies..."
recording: "https://vimeo.com/1213438219"
source: "Pi-Squared (pisquared.theburnescenter.org), The Burnes Center for Social Change"
licence: "none stated"
---

# Anita McGahan in conversation with Voni Pamphile

Voni Pamphile, Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy, George Washington University · 7 July 2026

## About the guest

Voni Pamphile is an Associate Professor of Strategic Management and Public Policy at the George Washington University School of Business. She studies organization theory, with a focus on social issues and business-society tensions. At George Washington, she teaches core courses on business ethics and public policy to undergraduate and MBA students. She has been named a Poets & Quants Top 40 Under 40 MBA Professor. Voni’s research has been published in leading journals and recognized with a range of. Her insights have also been featured in Harvard Business Review and policy briefs that help leaders translate research into practical action. Before she became a professor, Voni was Executive Director of a nonprofit and an AmeriCorps member, experiences that shaped her commitment to building organizations that balance commercial success with societal good. She holds a dual PhD in Management and Organizations and Sociology from Northwestern and a BA from the University of Michigan.

## Reflections from the interview

**Professor Voni Pamphile **studies the unresolvable tensions that show up in organizations:  stability vs. change, business vs. society, exploitation vs. exploration, global vs. local.   Where the rubber hits the road is when these tensions involve stigma, social ordering, counter-culturalism, philanthropy, and other frontier domains that are so essential for improving our quality of life.  Voni studies the heroic, hard work of holding these tensions and finding ways to move forward despite  heartbreaking challenges.   In this conversation with Anita, she talks with excitement and optimism about the reclaiming of worth through displaying of stigma; about paradox peers; about making it easy to do hard things.  Listen and be inspired on how organizations can change the societies in which they work.

## Related resources

- [Voni’s webpage at George Washington](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matt-harder/)
- [Google scholar on Voni](https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=BnEP2isAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao)
- [Voni’s new paper on market-stigmatized groups, distancing, and displaying](https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2023.0995)
- [Voni’s paper on making it easy to do hard things](https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/01708406241282126)
- [Voni’s paper on paradox peers](https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amj.2019.0616)

## Recording

Video: https://vimeo.com/1213438219

## 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/pamphile-voni · Licence: none stated