Encourages creative and innovative thinking.
Marissa King is the Alice Y. Hung President’s Distinguished Professor, Professor of Health Care Management, and Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, positions she assumed in 2023 upon joining from the Yale School of Management where she was Professor of Organizational Behavior. She earned her PhD from Columbia University. As a Senior Fellow at the Penn Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, King’s research focuses on social networks, social influence, team dynamics, and organizational dynamics within health care organizations and broader social structures. Her work examines factors shaping clinician burnout, the well-being of the health care workforce, access to behavioral health care, the opioid epidemic, and social dynamics surrounding the diagnosis and treatment of mental health conditions and substance use disorders. She has served as Principal Investigator on multiple projects funded by the National Institutes of Health, contributing to understandings of how social networks influence behaviors, performance, prescription drug abuse, opioid use disorders, and societal issues like loneliness.
King authored the book Social Chemistry: Decoding the Elements of Human Connection, published in 2021, which analyzes social networks and human connections. Her scholarship appears in premier outlets such as Administrative Science Quarterly, American Sociological Review, JAMA, Health Affairs, and Academy of Management Journal, including the forthcoming paper 'When Women Stick Together: Network-Based Gender Inequality and Disruptive Events' (2026). She holds editorial roles as Senior Editor at Organization Science and has served on the editorial boards of American Sociological Review and American Journal of Sociology. King’s research has garnered national recognition and media coverage in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic, Harvard Business Review, and National Public Radio, underscoring her impact on health care management, social sciences, and public policy.
