1982 Westerfield Award: Phyllis A. Wallace
Professor Phyllis A. Wallace (second from right) receives the Westerfield Award for black economists with outstanding achievements from the National Economic Association (NEA), 1982. Also shown, left to right: Bernard Anderson (NEA President), Margaret Simms (Chair), Alfred Osborne (former NEA President).
Phyllis Ann Wallace, a voice for anti-discrimination in the workplace, joined the MIT Sloan School of Management faculty as a visiting professor in 1973. Her promotion to full professor in 1975 made Wallace the first woman to gain tenure at Sloan.
She spearheaded a precedent-setting legal decision in a federal case that reversed sex and race discrimination in American industry. Wallace wrote about the case in her book Equal Employment Opportunity and the AT&T Case (MIT Press, 1976).
The Samuel Z. Westerfield Award is conferred every 3-5 years by the National Economic Association on an African American economist with a distinguished record throughout their career of scholarship, teaching, and public service.
