Sydney E. Scott, an associate professor of marketing at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, has been named one of Poets & Quants’ “Best 40-under-40 MBA Professors” for 2025.
Scott studies the psychology of consumer decisions. Her previous research has investigated how moral character beliefs affect medical decision-making, consumer attitudes toward “natural” and genetically modified foods, and how consumers try to improve and maintain their health.
Scott currently teaches marketing research courses in Olin’s MBA program. She told Poets & Quants that the thing she enjoys most about teaching business students is their engagement and the questions and stories they bring to class. “I love talking about what they are doing and how to figure out the right decision using data,” she said. But that’s also a challenge. “No year is ever the same, and every student has new questions, contexts and applications they are thinking about in their own career trajectory.”
In 2023, Scott was named a Marketing Science Institute Young Scholar, an honor awarded to scholars “whose work suggests they are potential leaders of the ‘next generation’ of marketing academics.” In 2024, she received the WashU Provost’s Research Excellence Award for her contributions.
Read more about Scott and the honor on the Poets & Quants website.
