2019 Venky Narayanamurti Entrepreneurial Leadership Award Recipient
Sara Miller McCune
Founder and Executive Chairman, SAGE Publishing

Sara Miller McCune is the founder of SAGE Publishing and executive chairman of the company’s board of directors. Guided by an entrepreneurial spirit and an unwavering dedication to academia, the then-24-year-old Sara founded SAGE in 1965 to start a company that would allow scholars to disseminate quality research in their own voices and break new ground in emerging fields of study. Today, McCune also serves as a director of SAGE Publications Ltd. (London, founded in 1971) and Corwin, a SAGE company and leading publisher for educational administrators and teachers. SAGE set up subsidiaries in India in 1981, in Singapore in 2006, in Melbourne in 2016, and has additional major offices in Beijing and Shanghai, Cairo, Toronto, and Washington DC. McCune remains actively involved in the company’s expansion and development.

Reflecting her longstanding interest in philanthropy, especially in promoting social, educational, economic, and environmental justice, McCune is founder and president of the McCune Foundation, a nonprofit organization based in Ventura County, California, where SAGE’s home office is located. The foundation supports productive change through building social capital in two counties on California’s Central Coast. 

In 2007, McCune founded the Miller-McCune Center for Research, Media and Public Policy, which launched the award-winning magazine Pacific Standard. In 2017, the magazine and the Center’s mission were transferred to The Social Justice Foundation, a non-profit organization supported by SAGE Publishing.

In 2012, McCune received an honorary doctorate from her alma mater, Queens College, for her visionary work as publisher, philanthropist, and entrepreneur. In 2014, she was awarded an honorary fellowship from Cardiff University and an honorary doctorate from Bath University, and in 2016, McCune received honorary degrees from CSU Channel Islands and Sussex University. In 2017, Ms. McCune was honored by the Association of Learned and Professional Society Publishers (UK) for her contribution to scholarly publishing and in 2018, she was awarded the prestigious London Book Fair Lifetime Achievement Award in recognition of her 50+ years working within the publishing industry. She is also an Honorary Fellow of both CASBS at Stanford, and Pembroke College at Oxford.

An active supporter of the behavioral and social sciences, McCune was a long-serving member of the board of directors of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, currently serves on the board of directors for the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford University, and chairs the Visiting Committee at the Social Science Research Council based in New York, where she also serves on its Board of Directors. In 2018 she was offered membership to the highly prestigious American Philosophical Society, the oldest learned society in the United States.