Greg Wilson

Greg Wilson is an assistant professor of management and public affairs and (by courtesy) sociology at The Ohio State University. At Ohio State, he is also a faculty affiliate at the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Center for Ethics and Human Values. He also holds an affiliation with the Center for Community and Nonprofit Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. 

Wilson’s research agenda critically examines how the nonprofit sector is racialized and its implications for organizations led by people of color, with a particular focus on Black-led organizations (BLOs). His work interrogates how racialized structures and norms shape organizational experiences, strategies and capacities for change within the sector. His scholarship has appeared in leading interdisciplinary and field-specific journals, including Public Administration Review, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Perspectives on Public Management and Governance, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, reflecting both the theoretical depth and applied relevance of his work. Currently, Wilson is advancing three interrelated projects: theorizing racialization in the nonprofit sector that helps understand the processes and mechanisms through which racialization operates; exploring how organizations led by people of color, especially BLOs, identify, interpret and respond to racialization; and examining how organizations engage in racialized change work aimed at challenging and disrupting racialization within the sector. Across these projects, he maintains a commitment to methodological pluralism, guided by the principle that research questions should determine methodological choices. His work integrates qualitative, quantitative and mixed methods approaches and is informed by multidisciplinary theoretical perspectives within sociology and public administration. 

Beyond his scholarly agenda, Wilson’s teaching interests are in nonprofit organizations, management and leadership, race and inequality, mixed and qualitative methods, and technical communication. In addition to research and teaching, outside of the Glenn College Wilson is a Faculty Fellow in the Justice Labs of America at Brown University. He has also been a visiting scholar at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Fellow at the New York University Stern School of Business. Previously, he has been affiliated with and funded by the Institute for Research on Poverty. He also consults nonprofits on leadership and philanthropic strategy. 

Wilson earned a PhD in sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also holds an MA in social sciences from the University of Chicago as well as a Master of Education in higher education administration and a BA in political science and English — both from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.