Our Favorite MBA Professors of 2017

How is this for a jaw-dropping statistic? Of the 10,000 case studies that Harvard Business School has authored, just 100 feature an African American protagonist. This 1% marker takes on even great significance when you factor in that Harvard cases represent up to 80% of the cases studied in business schools worldwide.

Steven Rogers is on a mission to change all that.

A senior lecturer of business administration who joined HBS in 2012, Rogers has created a case-based course that features African American business protagonists. In the process, he has also developed new cases like Ebony magazine, which examines whether a new leader, Linda Johnson Rice, should sell, save, or shutter a mature product. In addition, he has been lobbying other HBS faculty to include or author cases that feature African Americans.

While Rogers sees a defining issue, he remains focused on a specific end. “The reality is, we don’t have an integrated curriculum that showcases and highlights African Americans in the same way it does others,” he tells P&Q. “My desire is that in the immediate future that will be a non-issue, and that all core courses will have cases that have African-American protagonists. And the real idea will be that the need for my course goes away.”