Iris Bohnet

Researcher

Albert Pratt Professor of Business and Government at Harvard Kennedy School. She studies how the design of choices can reduce bias in organizations.

Bohnet studies how people make choices. She teaches at Harvard Kennedy School. She holds its Albert Pratt chair in business and government. She also helps lead its program on women and public policy. [1]

Her work joins the study of markets with the study of the mind. She asks how rules can make choices fairer at work. This is a direct part of management. [1]

Bohnet wrote What Works and Make Work Fair. [1] [2] She also spent six years as the school’s academic dean. She has given advice to firms, states, and the UN chief. [1]

Trust her on fair ways to hire, rate, and promote staff. She studies these choices, writes for leaders, and has led a large school. Yet a better rule cannot settle each moral or legal question. Each change still needs a clear test at work. [1] [2]

1
Harvard Kennedy School, “Iris Bohnet,” accessed September 2, 2026.
https://www.hks.harvard.edu/faculty/iris-bohnet
2
Iris Bohnet, What Works: Gender Equality by Design (Cambridge, MA: Belknap Press, 2016), § “WHAT WORKS.”