maRy lacity

Dr. Lacity is Walton Professor of Information Systems and Director of the Blockchain Center of Excellence in the Sam M. Walton College of Business at The University of Arkansas. She was previously Curators’ Distinguished Professor at the University of Missouri-St. Louis. 

She has held visiting positions at MIT, the London School of Economics, Washington University, and Oxford University. She is a Certified Outsourcing Professional ®, Industry Advisor for Symphony Ventures, and Senior Editor for MIS Quarterly Executive. Her recent research focuses on improving business services using Robotic Process Automation (RPA), Cognitive Automation (CA), and Blockchain technologies. She has conducted case studies and surveys of hundreds of organizations on their adoption journeys. She has given keynote speeches and executive seminars worldwide and has served as an expert witness for the US Congress.  

She was inducted into the IAOP’s Outsourcing Hall of Fame in 2014, one of only three academics to ever be inducted. She was the recipient of the 2008 Gateway to Innovation Award sponsored by the IT Coalition, Society for Information Management, and St. Louis RCGA. She has published 28 books, most recently, A Manager’s Guide to Blockchains for Business, SB Publishing, UK. Her publications have appeared in the Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review, MIS Quarterly, MIS Quarterly Executive, IEEE Computer, Communications of the ACM, and many other academic and practitioner outlets.