Gwendolyn J. Gordon *14

Gwen died Jan. 1, 2022, in Philadelphia. 

She was born May 14, 1980. She earned a bachelor’s degree from Cornell in 2002 and a law degree from Harvard Law School in 2006, where she focused on social and economic human rights for indigenous groups. She earned a Ph.D. in anthropology from Princeton in 2014. 

Gwen was appointed to the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Legal Studies and Business Ethics in 2013. Her research was on ethnographically informed comparative corporate law, focusing on the intersection of indigenous peoples’ cultural norms with issues of corporate governance and social responsibility. She did long-term ethnographic fieldwork in New Zealand with an indigenously owned corporation. As well as being an accomplished anthropologist and a popular professor at Penn, Gwen was an avid writer of fiction.

Prior to her appointment at Penn, Gwen worked as a corporate attorney in the London and New York offices of Shearman & Sterling.

Predeceased by her father, Andrew Gordon III, Gwen is survived by her mother, Jacqueline; brothers Andrew, David, and Aaron; and several cousins and godchildren.

Graduate memorials are prepared by the APGA.