Rachelle Sampson, Associate Professor at the Smith School of Business at the University of Maryland, talked with Anita about the arc of her research career. Rachelle traces her journey from studying alliance governance and how organizational structure shapes behavior, to teaching sustainability at her students' request, which eventually pulled her research focus toward ESG and corporate decision-making. A key realization drove this shift: even well-intentioned leaders who genuinely care about broader stakeholders often fail to act on that care — and the reasons go far beyond a lack of information.

This led Rachelle to investigate the role of capital markets in driving corporate short-termism. She argues that executive compensation becoming tightly tied to stock prices — a consequence of tax code changes — created a feedback loop where leaders are pressured to prioritize near-term stock performance over longer-term investments. Compounding this is the rise of algorithmic, momentum-driven trading that disconnects stock prices from firm fundamentals, and the surprising short-termism of institutional investors like pension funds that are underfunded and need high near-term returns. The result is a narrowing of R&D bets, underinvestment in workforce development, and weaker supply chain resilience.

On ESG, Rachelle notes two major challenges: the politicization of ESG investing, and a serious measurement problem. Because ESG reporting in the U.S. is unregulated and unaudited, corporate disclosures are difficult to verify or compare across firms — reducing them, in her words, to little more than PR documents. Europe, she notes, has made more progress on requiring and auditing ESG disclosures. Underneath the noise, she argues, genuine ESG practices like paying living wages and investing in workforce development do produce real long-term financial benefits, such as lower turnover and higher productivity.

Her most recent and perhaps most unconventional research thread explores how consciousness-expanding experiences — including meditation, long-distance running, and psychedelics — might influence how leaders make decisions. Drawing on psychology research into scarcity and "tunneling behavior," she explains that persistent feelings of scarcity cause people to become narrowly focused and short-term oriented. Her hypothesis is that experiences which increase a sense of connectedness — to others, to oneself, to the natural world — might counteract this tunneling and broaden both the time horizon and the range of stakeholders that leaders consider in their decision-making.

When asked what keeps her motivated, Rachelle points to three things: her students, who she says show growing passion for these issues with each new cohort; insights from systems dynamics research suggesting that meaningful systemic change requires far fewer people than most assume; and the inspiring community of scholars and practitioners working on these problems.