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.