Dr. Teresa Nelson’s work has been deeply guided by her interest in innovation – what it is, what it means, how and whom it impacts, and how it is actualized as entrepreneurship by individuals, teams and companies. An active researcher, Dr. Nelson is known globally for her scholarship related to women and gender and diversity in entrepreneurship and family business. As an Obama era appointee to the National Women’s Business Council, a group appointed to advise Congress, the White House and the Small Business Administration on issues of women and business, she began to specialize in women’s roles in commercializing science. She now works with the MIT Innovation Initiative, Astia and the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association, among others, to build understanding and organizational capabilities around inclusion as a strategic business practice, particularly in life sciences.
Dr. Nelson is a co-founder of The Impact Seat, a consultancy on issues of organizational capabilities of diversity and inclusion. She is also a Professor of strategic management in the Business School at Simmons University in Boston and a Faculty Affiliate in the Center for Gender in Organizations. She has taught on five continents to students at the doctoral, master, executive masters and undergraduate levels. She is a sought-after speaker on topics such as women entrepreneurs in science, the context of entrepreneurship, inclusion as a strategic management practice, and the entrepreneur’s journey.
A sequence of institution-building acts in the United States 1930-1980 set an infrastructure to facilitate the partnership of university faculty with government and private industry for the purpose of science invention and subsequent commercialization. Today academic entrepreneurship is increasingly the heart of science invention with entire industries like the internet and biotechnology rooted in faculty accomplishment. Rising demand since the 1960s for STEM gender equity intersects and complicates this institutional success story. This meta-synthesis compiles research from multiple fields to present the state of knowledge on women and gender, with an intersectionality concern, as regards faculty participation in academic entrepreneurship.
