Contact
2106 Steinberg Hall-Dietrich Hall. 3620 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA, USA, 19104-6370.
E-mail: pongelup@wharton.upenn.edu
Phone: +1 (215) 898-7684
Profiles
Wharton faculty page | Google Scholar | ORCID | SSRN | LinkedIn | X
Leandro Simões Pongeluppe
Introduction
Leandro "Leo" Pongeluppe is a socio-environmental impact specialist, an assistant professor of management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, and a Leonard J. Horwitz Faculty Scholar. Leo holds a PhD in Strategic Management from the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. His research focuses on stakeholder management and socioeconomic development. Leo studies how organizations' design and governance affect the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), particularly the goals of reducing poverty, conserving the environment, and safeguarding health and security. Leo uses mixed methods in his research, combining econometric causal inference methods with ethnographic techniques to analyze multifaceted problems related to socioeconomic development. His fieldwork spans the Brazilian favelas, the Amazon rainforest, and HIV/AIDS treatment clinics in Africa.
Leo's research has been published in Administrative Science Quarterly, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, the Review of Economics and Statistics, Business Ethics Quarterly, the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, and Academy of Management Discoveries, among other outlets. His work has received the William F. Glueck Best Paper Award from the Academy of Management (2021), the Best Paper Award at the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) Annual Conference (2021), the Wiley Blackwell Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Strategic Management Division of the Academy of Management (2023), the Administrative Science Quarterly Dissertation Award (2025), and two awards from Responsible Research in Business and Management (RRBM), in the Macro and Micro Areas (both 2025), among others. Leo serves on the editorial review boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Strategic Management Journal, and Strategy Science. At Wharton, he teaches Managing the Established Enterprise in the MBA program, for which he received the Wharton Teaching Excellence Award three times (2023-24, 2024-25, and 2025-26).
Professionally, Leo co-founded and worked as a PMO at Insper Metricis, a research group dedicated to evaluating projects' socio-environmental impact, where he remains a research associate. At Insper Metricis, Leo participated in the design of Brazil's first Social Impact Bond (SIB), in partnership with the São Paulo State Government, Sundfeld Attorneys, Social Finance-UK, International Finance Corporation (IFC), and Inter-American Development Bank (IDB). Leo also worked for about three years as an associate researcher at the Accenture Institute for High Performance, on projects related to inclusive innovation and public innovation in Brazil, China, Ghana, India, Mozambique, Nigeria, and South Africa.
News
- June 2026 WHYY. Lessons learned from Ida: Philadelphia must brace for next big storm, Penn researchers say.
- March 2026 The African Mirror. HIV in Malawi: digital filing system saved lives and boosted care - research.
- January 2026 New SAGE Business Case with Sandro Cabral, Sérgio Lazzarini, and Michelle Augusto Borges: "Banco da Providência: Dilemmas over Social Impact Assessment." Read it
Research Program
- Poverty and inequality: Who gains when organizations expand opportunity in Brazilian favelas and disadvantaged communities?
- Climate change: How can firms and communities protect the Amazon and the oceans while creating value?
- Healthcare and security: How do organizations reach underserved patients, and how does terrorism shape where multinationals operate?
Selected Publications
Pongeluppe, L. S. (2024). The Allegory of the Favela: The Multifaceted Effects of Socioeconomic Mobility. Administrative Science Quarterly, 69(3): 619-654. ASQ Dissertation Award 2025. DOINGO programs can increase labor market outcomes, but climbing the economic ladder increases psychological distress.
Derksen, L., McGahan, A. M., & Pongeluppe, L. S. (Forthcoming). The Lifesaving Impact of Electronic Medical Records for HIV Patients. Review of Economics and Statistics. Published online October 2025. DOIElectronic medical record implementation increased the number of patients in care and reduced deaths by 28% after five years.
McGahan, A. M., & Pongeluppe, L. S. (2023). There Is No Planet B: Aligning Stakeholder Interests to Preserve the Amazon Rainforest. Management Science, 69(12): 7860-7881. William F. Glueck Best Paper Award. DOIBy sharing value with local communities, firms can create Coasean mechanisms that internalize environmental externalities.
Pongeluppe, L. S. (2022). The Favela Effect: Spatial Inequalities and Firm Strategies in Disadvantaged Urban Communities. Strategic Management Journal, 43(13): 2777-2808. DOISpatial inequalities reinforce socioeconomic disparities, but stakeholder-oriented firms can moderate this effect.
Lazzarini, S. G., Boehe, D. M., Pongeluppe, L. S., & Cook, M. L. (2026). The Normative Core of Relational Stakeholder Strategies: Explaining Open Buyer-Supplier Relations in the Context of the Amazon Rainforest. Business Ethics Quarterly, 36(1): 69-111. DOIFirms guided by a morally informed normative core can sustain open supplier relations with Amazon communities, even when competitors buy from them too.