Wren Montgomery

Associate Professor, Sustainability & General Management

JJ Wettlaufer Faculty Fellowship

Professor Montgomery is an associate professor of management and sustainability, and J.J. Wettlaufer Faculty Fellow at the Ivey Business School at Western University, Canada, as well as a faculty affiliate at the University of Michigan’s Erb Institute for Sustainable Enterprise. Montgomery’s research on firm environmental communications has been pivotal in defining greenwash and its tactics, and informing strategies to stop it. Her research has been featured in top academic journals and in prominent media outlets, such as The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, CBC Marketplace, CBC News, Bloomberg News, and The Washington Post among numerous others. In 2023, Montgomery co-founded the Greenwash Action Lab to make academic research and insights accessible to policymakers, NGOs, and managers leading anti-greenwashing efforts. These outreach and impact efforts were recognized with the 2024 ONE-SIM Outreach Award at the Academy of Management.

During the 2024-25 academic year Professor Wren Montgomery is honoured to be an invited fellow at Stanford University’s Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences a fellowship previously held by 30 Nobel Laureates. While at CASBS, Professor Montgomery will be working on a new book on greenwashing tentatively titled, Beating the Greenwashers. This book draws on extensive research to offer a new paradigm for “honest” sustainable businesses, namely, how to gain or maintain competitive advantage in an environment where many competitors are exaggerating and being deceptive. 

Montgomery also researches issues at the intersection of justice and sustainability, including her multi award-winning research on the Detroit waters shutoffs and access and affordability challenges. This research program has been recognized with a Best Dissertation (ONE, 2016) and Best Paper Award (OMT, 2016) from the Academy of Management. Her publication, "Water Wars in Detroit: Custodianship and the Work of Institutional Renewal" (AMJ, 2020), was also awarded both the RRBM Award for Responsible Research in Management and the NBS-ONE Research Impact on Practice Award.

Montgomery also currently serves as co-lead of the Impact Scholar Community, a community of over 1,000 early-career organizations researchers seeking to do socially and environmentally impactful research. In addition, she is a board member for the Alliance for the Great Lakes as well as Silicon Valley based start-up iWater Technologies. Prior to returning to academia, Montgomery worked as a management consultant, a financial analyst, and as a senior government policy analyst.