Howard Kunreuther will be remembered for his many brilliant contributions to our understanding of people’s risk thinking and for his important practical contributions to disaster policies. I hope he will also be remembered for his personal warmth and generosity as a mentor. I will always be incredibly grateful for having had the privilege of working in Howard’s department at Wharton and benefiting from his mentorship.

I joined the Wharton faculty in 2009 as an assistant professor in Howard’s group—the Department of Operations and Information Management. He warmly welcomed me into the decision-making processes and immediately became one of my favorite colleagues. Whenever I was unsure how to approach a new research project or tackle a policy challenge in the department, he was happy to meet me over lunch (he always insisted on inviting me) and help me figure out the next steps. I could count on him to arrive full of enthusiasm for any new project he pursued, and somehow he always seemed equally excited to hear about my work, which was incredibly flattering and encouraging to me as a young, eager academic.

Although Howard was about four decades older than me, he was an extraordinarily active faculty member. I mean “active” in many ways—among other things, he still rode his bike to the office every day, an “active” feat I never accomplished myself. Even more remarkable, he still led incredibly important efforts to apply behavioral science to the challenges posed by climate change and the new risks it poses, by traveling the world to present his research and ideas, and by directing the Wharton Risk Center, which he co-directed with Paul Kleindorfer and later Bob Meyer.

It was always a pleasure to walk into the fifth floor entrance of our department in Jon M. Huntsman Hall and see Howard in the conference room at a Risk Center meeting. Often he would be there with superstars I had long wanted to meet but never had the chance to interact with, and he would come out when I waved “hello” to make sure I was introduced to my heroes. I vividly remember how excited I was to meet Paul Slovic in just this way. Like Howard, Paul is a giant in the field of judgment and decision making, and I was enormously grateful that Howard went out of his way to give me the opportunity to meet Paul when I was an assistant professor.

Howard was a champion of all who worked with him and one of the most optimistic and dedicated people I have ever met in science. When he retired a few years ago and I learned I would be taking over his chair, I considered it one of the greatest honors of my career – and I always will.

Howard’s commitment to mentoring was unmatched. Even in his 70s, Howard continued to mentor and co-author papers with outstanding postdoctoral fellows, such as Dena Gromet (who now works closely with me and is the executive director of the Behavior Change for Good initiative, which I co-direct) and Shirin Chaudry (who is now a professor at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business). These are just two very recent examples of the generations of scholars Howard mentored, but they underscore that his influence as a mentor continued until the end of his career.

Howard’s Risk Center also became a major funder of graduate student research on decision making at the Wharton School. Thanks to Howard’s commitment to distributing funds to talented trainees in our community, the Risk Center was able to award significant fellowships to graduate students each year, positively impacting the lives and research trajectories of many of them. The poster sessions that the Risk Center hosted for its sponsored graduate student research were a great annual event created by Howard.

Howard cared deeply about our unique, interdisciplinary department at Wharton and wanted to ensure that it remained a vibrant, collegial community where serious and generous scientists could thrive. I remember him being the first to tell me the story of how our department came to be—it was founded some 60 years ago with input from the late Nobel Prize winner Herb Simon, who recognized the importance of studying “man and machine” in parallel. The group was founded to deliberately blend ideas about human behavior and optimization. Howard was completely committed to that vision.

Howard was a champion of improving department dynamics. I remember sitting down with him after a particularly difficult year when I personally felt there were real divisions within our group, and I am grateful to him to this day for the thoughts he put into how we could improve things. When I was preparing to become a mother (and I believe I was one of the first women in our department to ever do so), he not only congratulated me but suggested concrete resources to ensure a smooth transition, which I relied on heavily.

I have so many fond memories of my interactions with Howard. These include:

• Howard knocks on my door to say hello;
• Howards stops by to drop off a copy of his latest book, The Ostrich Paradox;
• When I met Howard in the department lobby in his cycling gear and heard about his wonderful ride to work that morning;
• whitewater rafting in Howard’s boat after a conference in Pittsburgh (even though he was the oldest rider in our boat at nearly half a century old, he felt much safer on the water than the rest of us);
• to meet Howard by chance at the annual meeting of the Society for Judgment and Decision Making and to be warmly included in the conversation he was having with other leading minds in our field; and
• We recognized Howard’s achievement at his incredible farewell banquet at the Cira Center, where a number of great speakers highlighted his many extraordinary contributions.

I also remember getting an email from Howard in mid-2021 – after he had retired – to learn that my staff and I were working on strategies to increase COVID vaccination acceptance. Even as a professor emeritus, Howard had important ideas to propose. He was particularly bullish on vaccine lotteries, and with his enthusiastic support and that of Danny Kahneman, we managed to convince the city of Philadelphia to conduct a test of a behavioral vaccine lottery.

Over the decades, every time we met for lunch at Howard’s favorite restaurant – the Pod, the de facto Wharton faculty club – Howard would say that the moment we were in was “the most exciting of his career.” His enthusiasm for research and for using it to improve the world was unparalleled. I strive to maintain a similar level of passion for my own work and for using behavioral science to improve the world.