People & Partners

Kirstin Appelt is the Research Director of Decisions Insights for Business & Society (UBC-DIBS), the Academic Director of the Advanced Professional Certificate in Behavioural Insights, and the Academic Director for the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics. Her research explores how to use choice architecture to help make it easier for us to choose the best decisions for ourselves, society, and the planet. Kirstin also serves as a behavioural science consultant for organizations including the BC Behavioural Insights Group (BC BIG), BC Hydro, the California Health Benefit Exchange (Covered California), Fraser Health, Google, the Pacific Business Group on Health (PBGH), and WorkSafeBC. She received her Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University and her B.A. magna cum laude in Economics from Dartmouth College. 

Dale Griffin is a professor of Marketing and Behavioural Sciences and was the interim Academic Director of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics at UBC Sauder School of Business. He has taught at leading universities in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States, most recently at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University. Professor Griffin teaches courses in Responsible Business, Marketing Research, and Strategic Decision Making at the undergraduate, MBA and PhD levels, and lectures on strategy and decision-making for executive audiences, and provides legal consulting on consumer behaviour and risk perception. He is the co-editor, along with Thomas Gilovich and Daniel Kahneman, of Heuristics and Biases: The Psychology of Intuitive Judgment. He received his PhD from Stanford University.

David Hardisty is Associate Professor of Marketing & Behavioural Science at UBC Sauder School of Business. His research focuses on decisions about the future, including sustainability, financial planning, and impulsivity. He also studies attribute framing and social dilemmas. At UBC Sauder, he teaches Ethics & Sustainability and Consumer Behaviour. His ultimate goal is to develop tools to improve long-term decision making. He received his PhD in Psychology from Columbia University in 2011.

Kate White is Professor of Marketing and Behavioural Science at the UBC-Sauder School of Business. She holds a professorship in Consumer Insights, Prosocial Consumption, and Sustainability and is Academic Director of the Dhillon Centre for Business Ethics. Kate’s research focuses on how to encourage ethical, prosocial, and sustainable consumer behaviours. Kate has consulted on various behaviour-change projects with industry collaborators such as The City of Calgary, Health Canada, BC Women’s Hospital, My Sustainable Canada, BC Hydro, Big Rock Brewery, The United Way, and Celgene Health Care.

Jiaying Zhao is the Canada Research Chair in Behavioural Sustainability, and an Associate Professor in the Department of Psychology and the Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability at the University of British Columbia. Jiaying uses psychological principles to design behavioural solutions to address financial and environmental sustainability challenges. Specifically, she examines the cognitive consequences of poverty and designs interventions to alleviate the cognitive burdens in low-income individuals. In addition, she develops behavioural interventions to encourage recycling, composting, and biodiversity conservation. Jiaying has served as a research advisor and consultant for a number of organizations, including Financial Consumer Agency of Canada, Policy Horizons Canada, City of Vancouver, and the U.S. Social and Behavioral Sciences Team. She received her PhD in cognitive psychology from Princeton University in 2013.