John G. Lynch, Jr.

John G. Lynch, Jr. is University of Colorado Distinguished Professor at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado-Boulder. He also serves as Inaugural Director of the Initiative for Global Business Impact and is affiliated with the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making. Previously, from 2022-2024, he served as Executive Director of the Marketing Science Institute, a nonprofit think tank bridging industry and academia. He has held prestigious faculty positions at University of Florida (1979-1996) as Graduate Research Professor and at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business (1996-2009) as Roy J. Bostock Professor of Marketing.

Lynch received his BA in economics, MA in psychology, and PhD in psychology from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. His academic journey spans over four decades with significant contributions to consumer behavior research. He is the founding Director of the Center for Research on Consumer Financial Decision Making and founding co-chair of the Boulder Summer Conference on Consumer Financial Decision Making. He served on the Academic Research Council of the US Consumer Financial Protection Bureau from 2017-2020.

Lynch's research focuses on the cognitive psychology of consumer decision-making, particularly consumer financial decision-making since joining CU in 2009. His work spans consumer financial decision making, financial knowledge and well-being, planning for money and time, and research methodology validity. His publications reveal a strong emphasis on financial education effectiveness, couples' financial responsibility division, retirement savings behavior, and methodological rigor in marketing research. The recent publications show increasing focus on financial education, privacy regulation, statistical methodology, and the intersection of financial and physical health.

Lynch has received numerous prestigious awards including the 2025 American Marketing Association-Irwin-McGraw Hill Award for Distinguished Marketing Educator of the Year (the highest honor in academic marketing), Paul D. Converse Award for Outstanding Contributions to Marketing Science, and the Society for Consumer Psychology's Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award. He is a Fellow of the American Marketing Association, Association for Consumer Research, and American Psychological Association/Society for Consumer Psychology - one of only six scholars worldwide to achieve this triple distinction.

As an educator, Lynch has taught undergraduate Principles of Marketing, Marketing Research, and Senior Seminar in Marketing at CU. He has also taught MBA electives on market intelligence and PhD courses on marketing strategy and experimental design. He has supervised or co-supervised 100 PhD dissertations, with former students now on faculties of leading business schools worldwide. His teaching excellence has been recognized with multiple awards including Leeds MBA Elective Teaching Excellence Awards in 2011 and 2013.