It is our delight to announce that Miami University alumna Dr. Jessica Jones (‘09) will be joining the Entrepreneurship faculty this coming Fall as the David F. Hersche Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship.
Dr. Jones earned her Ph.D. in Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Operations at the University of Colorado Boulder – Leeds School of Business. Most recently, she has served as Assistant Professor of Management and Entrepreneurship and Sampson Enterprises Faculty Fellow at Haslam College of Business at the University of Tennessee. Prior to earning her Ph.D., she worked for a social enterprise in Latin America, served as Assistant Director of the John W. Altman Institute for Entrepreneurship at Miami from 2012–15, and received her Miami University undergraduate degree in American Studies and Management and Entrepreneurship at the Miami University Farmer School of Business in 2009.
Dr. Jones has published her research in top entrepreneurship and management journals, received several research awards and grants, and has a growing reputation as a thought leader in the field. In her research, she explores the challenges and opportunities of launching new ventures without traditional access to resources and support, focusing particularly on how entrepreneurship drives meaningful societal change. She is also passionate about the intersection of business and impact, focusing on topics like social entrepreneurship and impact investing and prioritizing collaborative partnerships that can inform both research and practice. She has been a long-time collaborator with our Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Miami University, and is an exciting addition to its team of field-leading social entrepreneurship scholars.
In recent years, Dr. Jones has contributed to the growing body of entrepreneurship research through publishing several academic articles. In 2024, she was lead author on the paper, “Does religion matter to angels? Exploring the influence of religion in entrepreneurial investor decision-making.” This work examines how religion, both as a guiding institutional logic and a personal religious belief, influences angel investor evaluations. It introduces the concept of religious claims acting as a “double-edged sword,” capable of either repelling or attracting angel investors, depending on how it is engaged.
In 2023, “Navigating the highs and lows of entrepreneurial identity threats to persist: The countervailing force of a relational identity with God” advanced the “theological turn” in entrepreneurship by developing a conceptual model explaining how individuals navigate entrepreneurial identity threats through the interaction between a relational identity with God and an entrepreneurial identity to persist in entrepreneurial action.
In 2022, Jones and her co-authors identified an interactive, ongoing three-step process of identity multiplicity work with the paper “Trying to Serve Two Masters is Easy, Compared to Three: Identity Multiplicity Work by Christian Impact Investors.” This study develops a model of identity multiplicity work, explaining how Christian impact investors manage their financial, social, and religious identities to reduce tensions during impact investing.
We are pleased to welcome Dr. Jessica Jones back to Miami and look forward to the good work she will continue to do, both in her ongoing research and in the classroom.
