Wendy De La Rosa

Wendy De La Rosa is an Assistant Professor of Marketing and the Alfred H. Williams Faculty Scholar at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Her research applies behavioral science to improve consumers' financial well-being, examining how people perceive and manage their financial resources.

She earned her PhD in Consumer Behavior from Stanford University and a Bachelor's degree in Finance and Management from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, graduating summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. Prior to her academic career, she worked as a private equity investor at Goldman Sachs and Centerbridge Partners, and helped start Google's first behavioral economics unit.

De La Rosa's research focuses on consumer behavior and financial decision-making, with particular emphasis on how psychological factors influence spending, saving, and benefit utilization. Her work explores interventions that can help individuals, especially those with limited resources, make better financial decisions. She has developed frameworks like the AI-IMPACT model to understand technology's impact on financial behaviors and has conducted extensive research on budgeting period framing and psychological ownership to increase government benefit utilization.

Her research demonstrates significant findings about payment frequency effects on spending behavior and how cognitive framing can improve financial decision-making, with practical implications for policymakers, fintech companies, and individuals seeking to improve their financial health.

• Forbes 30 under 30 Finance honoree (2018)
• Paul & Daisy Soros Fellow
• Alfred H. Williams Faculty Scholar
• Penn's David R. Goddard Leadership Award

De La Rosa serves on the board of Code for America and Propel, and is the co-creator and host of TED's "Your Money and Your Mind" series. Her TED talks have been viewed over 7 million times. As co-founder of Common Cents Lab, she has worked to improve financial well-being for low-to-moderate-income people through evidence-based interventions.

Her work bridges academic research and practical application, making significant contributions to both scholarly understanding and real-world financial well-being, particularly for underserved populations.