Kathy Babiak, PhD

Dr. Kathy Babiak is a professor of Sport Management and director of the Michigan Center for Sport & Social Responsibility at the University of Michigan School of Kinesiology. She serves as associate dean for faculty affairs. Additionally, she was a co-founder of the Sport, Health and Activity Research and Policy (SHARP) Center for Women and Girls. Dr. Babiak completed her PhD in Leisure and Sport Management at the University of British Columbia.

Dr. Babiak has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, including the Journal of Sport Management, Sport Management Review, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, and the Journal of Business Ethics (JBE). She is associate editor for the European Sport Management Quarterly, and on the editorial board of numerous sport management journals. Dr. Babiak is a member of several professional organizations, including the North American Society for Sport Management (NASSM), and is a faculty affiliate for U-M's Center for Entrepreneurship and Center for Social Impact. She has been invited to speak about sport management and social responsibility as a keynote at numerous international events and conferences. Her article "More Than Just a Game? Corporate Responsibility and Super Bowl XL" was named one of Sport Marketing Quarterly's "Top 20 Articles in 20 Years." Dr. Babiak is a NASSM Research Fellow, and she was the recipient of 2017-18 Kinesiology Student’s Choice Award for Teaching Excellence.

Dr. Babiak has received more than one million dollars in grant funding from organizations such as the Women's Sport Foundation and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her main line of research focuses on sport and social impact. In this area, she explores how organizations devise social responsibility strategies to maximize the value and benefit to both organizations and to society.

Dr. Babiak's most recent research explores the corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities of professional sport organizations (NBA, NHL, MLB and NFL) to better understand how teams and leagues benefit from these CSR activities, why sport organizations choose to ally themselves with particular causes (such as the NFL’s efforts around physical activity, or Premier League teams’ emphasis on mental health), and what is the social impact of these efforts.