Srini Venugopal

Srini Venugopal is an Associate Professor and holder of the Donald and Gabrielle McCree Endowed Professorship of Business at the University of Vermont’s Grossman School of Business. His research focuses on leveraging social innovation to address poverty through wellbeing-enhancing solutions, with fieldwork spanning five continents. He has published over 20 articles on subsistence marketplaces, climate adaptation, and consumption ethics. Venugopal is a recipient of discipline-wide awards from the American Marketing Association and Association of Consumer Research, and has been voted Professor of the Year by SI-MBA students for three consecutive years.

Prior to academia, he founded a technology-based social venture in India delivering education services to rural low-income populations. He currently leads Diya, an education-focused social enterprise operating in South India’s low-income neighborhoods. His work bridges academic research with practical impact, emphasizing community-centric approaches to development challenges.

• Research Interests: Social innovation, subsistence marketplaces, climate resilience, consumption ethics, institutional work, and inclusive development.
• Key Contributions: Developed frameworks for assessing environmental disruptions in subsistence communities and pioneered methodologies for studying hard-to-reach populations.

His publications highlight interdisciplinary approaches to poverty alleviation, blending marketing theory with environmental and sociological insights. Venugopal’s awards reflect his dual excellence in research and teaching, while his social enterprises demonstrate a commitment to real-world impact.