Rachel Arnett, PhD
Assistant Professor, The Wharton School
​Rachel Arnett is an Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. She is in the Organizational Behavior subgroup of the Management Department.
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Rachel specializes in how employees navigate identities, cultivate inclusion, and achieve success at work. She collaborates with organizations through field experiments, surveys, and qualitative research to provide actionable insights for more inclusive workplaces.
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Rachel was designated a Claude Marion Endowed Faculty Scholar from 2023–2025. A passionate educator, Rachel teaches negotiations at Wharton and is a four-time recipient of the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award and was named among Poets & Quants' Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors in 2022. Rachel completed her doctoral studies in Organizational Behavior at Harvard University, following a BA from the University of Pennsylvania and experience in working in brand strategy.​
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Research
Rachel’s research investigates how employees navigate identities, cultivate inclusion, and achieve success. Her work examines the tensions individuals face when deciding whether and how to express or suppress identity-based differences, whether and how to engage in allyship and inclusive behavior, as well as the consequences of those decisions for well-being, relationships, career success, and organizational outcomes. A central goal of her research is to understand why navigating identities and differences is so challenging and what organizations can do to create environments in which employees feel more comfortable expressing important aspects of themselves, speaking up, and building connections across differences. See her Research page to learn about the different sub-streams of her work.
Navigating
Social Identity
Speaking Up &
Cultivating Inclusion
Achieving
Career Success
Publications
"A curation approach to identity management: The costs of combining identity expression and suppression."
Administrative Science Quarterly.
"Uniting through difference: Rich cultural-identity expression as a conduit to inclusion."
Organization Science
"Sacrificing status for social harmony: Concealing relatively high status identities from one’s peers."
Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes
"Not Such a Complainer Anymore: Bias Confrontation that Signals a Growth Mindset Can Undercut Backlash."
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Education
Harvard University / Harvard Business School
Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior
Harvard University
Master of Arts
University of Pennsylvania
Bachelor of Arts
Awards and Grants
Runner Up for Outstanding Publication in OB Award, Academy of Management OB Division
2024
Claude Marion Endowed Faculty Scholar
2023-2025
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Poets & Quants Best 40-Under-40 MBA Professors 2022
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Wharton School Teaching Award
2018, 2019, 2020, 2021
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Wharton Dean’s Fund
2019, 2020, 2022, 2026
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Wharton-INSEAD Alliance Research Award
2018
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Most Innovative Student Paper Award, Academy of Management Organizational Behavior Division
2015