Robert A. G. Monks is a shareholder activist and one of the founders of the field of corporate governance. He is the author of Corpocracy and The New Global Investors, and with Nell Minow, Watching the Watchers, Corporate Governance and Power & Accountability.

He was the recipient of the Award for Outstanding Financial Executive from the Financial Management Association in 2007.

Monks has written widely about corporate governance and has published more than a hundred papers in publications around the world.

Monks is the subject of a biography chronicling the corporate governance movement, A Traitor to His Class by Hilary Rosenberg.

"The corporation is an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine." - Robert Monks (2003) Republican candidate for Senate from Maine and corporate governance adviser in the film "The Corporation"