Anica Zeyen

Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Sustainability, School of Business and Management, Royal Holloway University of London (UK)

Dr. Anica Zeyen is a registered blind academic who specialises on the intersection between entrepreneurship, organizing and disability research. She leads multiple research projects in the Global South (Uganda, Zambia, South Africa, DRC, Philippines, India) on disability, chronic pain and entrepreneurship. She further leads a British Academy funded project on the impact of COVID19 on disabled people within the UK. More on her work on her blog and web page.

Oana Branzei

Professor of Strategy, Ivey Business School, Western Univesrity (Canada

Dr. Oana Branzei is a Professor of Strategy and Sustainability at the Ivey Business School, Western University. Her areas of expertise include social innovation, social enterprise, and organizing for self-, society-, and system-transformation in response to grand challenges. She has held editorial positions on the boards of the ‘Academy of Management Review’, ‘Journal of Management’, ‘Journal of International Business Studies’. She is completing her second full term as field editor of the Journal of Business Venturing and co-edited several recent special issues on prosocial, regenerative, place-based and inclusive organizing.

Jean M. Bartunek

Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris chair / Professor of Management and Organization, Boston College USA)

Dr. Jean M. Bartunek is the Robert A. and Evelyn J. Ferris chair and professor of Management and Organization at Boston College.  She is a past president of the Academy of Management and a past dean of the Fellows of the Academy of Management.  She has served as an associate editor of the Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Learning and Education, and the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science.  Her primary research interests are in academic-practitioner relationships and organizational change. More on her webpage

Elise Jones

Assistant Professor, US Coast Guard Academy (USA)

Dr. Elise Jones is an Assistant Professor in the Management Department at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. Dr. Jones received her PhD in Management and Organization from the Carroll School of Management at Boston College. Her research focuses on how people construct work-related identities in the presence of tensions that emanate from social norms and how interpersonal relationships shape the way people navigate these tensions. Her work has been published in Academy of Management Review, Academy of Management Perspectives, and Research in Organizational Change and Development. More on her webpage

Michel Anteby

Professor of Management and Organizations, Question School of Business, Boston University (USA)

Dr. Michel Anteby is a Professor of Management & Organizations at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business and (by courtesy) Sociology at Boston University’s College of Arts and Sciences. He also co-leads Boston University’s Precarity Lab. His research looks at how individuals relate to their work, their occupations, and the organizations they belong to. He examines more specifically the practices people engage in at work that help them sustain their chosen cultures or identities. In doing so, his research contributes to a better understanding of how these cultures and identities come to be and manifest themselves. More on his webpage

Jean-Marie Bazibu

Founder Hope & Health Inc (DRC)

Jean-Marie Bazibuhe is a psychologist from the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), and Founder & Executive Director of Hope & Health Vision Inc. Jean-Marie is an expert in working with clients who have severe mental illness and is specialized in counseling former child soldiers and women who have faced egregious sexual violence. This work has spanned across many contexts, including Burundi, Eastern DRC, and Northern Uganda. Recently, during the double-burden trauma from the Ebola and Coronavirus outbreak, he co-led a coalition with international committees from the United Nations to coordinate psychosocial support for those most impacted in Eastern DRC. Jean-Marie has also worked as a counselor in the USA, supporting those at a juvenile Detention Center and those with mental illnesses at a crisis center. His success has led him to be invited to the United Nations to share the impact of Hope & Health Vision Inc., specific to promoting youth mental health and wellbeing as a strategy for social integration and poverty eradication. With Hope and Health Inc, Jean-Marie is currently co-leading a collaborative pilot project on Catalyzing Youth As Mindful Social Innovators for Mental Wellbeing’, a project Funded by UK Research & Innovation.

Michael Brown

Founder Empower to Cook (UK)

Michael is a professionally trained chef and a qualified lecturer with 30 years of teaching experience. After a challenging upbringing, he left school with few qualifications. He was diagnosed with adult ADHD in 2015. He graduated from the School for Social Entrepreneurs and currently leads Empower to Cook CIC (E2C) Transforming lives through cookery workshops. He works with schools, families, social housing, unemployed, mental health clients, carers, community groups and corporates. E2C is working hard to use food waste/surplus in all its classes and tackle the environmental impact this has. He has connected with large corporates, including Johnson and Johnson. E2C has been funded by the Rothschild Foundation over 3 years. He instigated, with their help, a Bucks Food Partnership. A more joined up approach to tacking the food agenda in Bucks. E2C are now opening a new Cookery and Wellbeing Kitchen in March 2022, partnering with another local social enterprise. He runs the social enterprise supported by a disability support worker funded through DWP Access to Work scheme. More on his webpage

Beverley Duguid

Founder InsightMind (UK)

Dr.Beverley Duguid is a writer and researcher who has worked widely in the not-for-profit and academic sectors on projects which highlight inequalities. She is also a business owner, in 2020 she created InsightMind to drive her creation:  ‘mindful visual awareness’© An adaptive kind of mindfulness which stresses, balance, creativity and compassion. She now teaches this technique, mainly online, to underrepresented groups, but chiefly those with visual impairments. She is an alumna of Royal Holloway.). More on her webpage

Vic McKinney

Disability Activist and Member of Shonaquip (South Africa)

Dr Vic McKinney is a disability activist and academic lecturer and researcher specialising in the field of disability studies. In 1987, when he was a young fine art student, Vic became a quadriplegic paralysed from the shoulders down in an accident. In the early 1990’s he became involved in disability and community development projects from grassroots to parliamentary level. He returned to the academy in 2003 to continue his studies and graduated with a Ph.D. in Disabilities Studies in 2016. He is passionate about all aspects of rehabilitation and education around disability and teaches on undergraduate and postgraduate programmes. Vic is a member of the Presidential Working Group on Disability and a board meeting of two local disabled people’s organizations. He also paints by holding a brush in his mouth and has sold many commissions over the years. He has been married to Emma, who is also an academic,  since 2009 and they live in Cape Town with their two children, Jamie, aged nine and Benjamin, who is six. More on webpage

Mark de Rond

Professor of Organisational Ethnography, Cambridge University (UK)

Dr. Mark de Rond studies people by living with them under similar conditions to better understand how they experience, and develop meaningful relations to, the world around them. A recurring feature of his work is the variety of human experience in (relatively) extreme contexts. His fieldwork has included prolonged stints with doctors and nurses at war (in Afghanistan), Boat Race crews in Cambridge, adventurers on the river Amazon, stop-the-war activists en route from Berlin to Aleppo and, most recently, paedophile hunters. More on his webpage

Donna Ladkin

Professor, of Leadership and Ethics, Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change(USA)

Dr. Donna Ladkin is Professor of Leadership and Ethics at Antioch University’s Graduate School of Leadership and Change in the USA.  A philosopher by background, she is known for her reconceptualization of leadership from an embodied and aesthetic perspective.  She combines this theoretical background with her practical training as a yoga teacher to bring new insights into the practice of writing as a breathing, physical process.  In this brief introduction, she will share key practices that can assist any writer in overcoming writer’s block and accessing bodily wisdom to access the voice within. More on her webpage

Tom Lawrence

Professor, Said Business School, Oxford University (UK)

Dr. Tom Lawrence is a Professor of Strategy at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. His research focuses on the role of agency in the social construction of organizational life. His most recent book is Constructing Organizational Life: How Social-Symbolic Work Shapes Selves, Organizations, and Institutions. More on his web page.

 Kate Caldwell

Professor, University of Illinois (USA)

A theorist, methodologist, and empirical researcher, Dr. Kate Caldwell has a background in Disability Studies and interdisciplinary social sciences. She brings this expertise to approaching complex issues where various fields intersect and facilitating dialogue across disciplin. More on her webpage

Maija Renko

Professor, Coleman Chair of Entrepreneurship, dePaul University (USA)

Dr. Maija Renko is a professor and the Coleman Chair of Entrepreneurship at the Driehaus College of Business, where she teaches entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship courses. Renko also serves as director of the Master of Science in Entrepreneurship Program. ​Renko joined DePaul in 2019 from the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was the recipient of multiple research and teaching awards, including Favorite MBA Professor (voted by students). More on her webpage

Eline Jammaers

Assistant Professor, Faculty of Business Economics, Hasselt University (Belgium)

Dr. Eline Jammaers is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Business Economics (Hasselt University, Belgium). Her research investigates the Othering processes related to gender and dis/ability in the waged workplace and in the context of self-employment. Using a post-structuralist lens, she aims to deconstruct unhelpful taken-for-granted binaries in organizational thinking of agency/structure, body/mind and human/non-human. The broader aim of her research is to question dominant power relations and reflect on more egalitarian workplace alternatives. Her work has appeared in journals like Human Relations, Organization Studies, Organization, and Entrepreneurship and Regional Development.

Patricia Hein

Assistant Professor (incoming), Ivey Business School, Western University (Canada)

Patricia Hein is an incoming Assistant Professor at the Ivey Business School,
Western University, and a PhD Candidate at EBS Universität für Wirtschaft und Recht,
Germany. Her research examines the processes of how organizations perpetuate inequalities but
also how they work to bring about societal change

Thomas Dirth

Assistant Professor, Bemidji State University (USA)

Dr. Thomas Dirth is Assistant Professor of Multicultural Psychology at Bemidji State University (Bemidji, MN). His teaching and research are informed by a synthesis of disability studies perspectives, critical psychology, and the social identity approach. He has written on a range of topics including disability social identity, the social model of disability, decolonizing psychology, and disability-directed advocacy. His current work is focused on disrupting ableism in higher education. He is a leading advocate for faculty with disabilities in the Minnesota State system of universities and Vice President of the Board for the regional Center for Independent Living

Glen Kreiner

Professor, Eccles School of Business, University of Utah (USA)


Dr. Glen Kreiner is a David Eccles Professor of Management at the University of Utah. He has published his research (conceptual, qualitative, and quantitative) in most of the management field’s top journals. His research areas include identity (organizational, professional, and work-related), ethics, mindful leadership, workers with intellectual/developmental disabilities, and work-family issues. More on his web page

Christine Mihelcic

Assistant Professor (incoming), University of Richmond (USA)


Christine worked as a mental health practitioner and policy advisor on mental health reform. Her current research lies at the intersection of identity, social entrepreneurship, and disability. 

Andreana Drencheva

Senior Lecturer (incoming), King’s College London (UK)


Dr Andreana Drencheva is an incoming Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Entrepreneurship at King’s Business School (UK). Her research interests focus on why and how individuals and communities engage in (social) entrepreneurship in their local context and with what intended and unintended impact. Her research has appeared in journals such as Business & Society, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Venturing, Journal of Small Business Management, and Journal of Social Entrepreneurship. Her work has received funding from Arts and Humanities Research Council, Economic and Social Research Council, British Council, and The Big Lottery. You can find more about her work on her web page.

Ute Stephan

Professor of Entrepreneurship, King’s College London (UK)


Dr. Ute Stephan is Professor of Entrepreneurship at King’s College London and a Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology. She is an Editor at Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Consulting Editor at the Journal of International Business Studies. From 2015-2019 she was Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychology: An International Review. Ute’s research explores (1) culture and institutions, (2) social entrepreneurship, and (3) entrepreneurial well-being.. More on her web pate

Alexandra Michel

Independent Researcher (USA)


Dr. Michel is a professor, author, and consultant. She has held faculty positions at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education and the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business. Her research is published in leading outlets, including Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, and Cambridge University Press. She serves on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Science. She has been featured in international TV, radio, and press outlets, including CNBC, Fox News, Bloomberg TV, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, TIME Magazine, New York Magazine, Los Angeles Times, and Forbes. Before completing her Ph.D. at the Wharton School of Business, she worked at Goldman Sachs, NYC, first as a banker, in Mergers and Acquisitions, and then with the Chief of Staff. Her clients include senior executives and organizations in the US and Europe, across such industries as banking, consulting, technology, business services, manufacturing, entertainment, healthcare, and education. More on her webpage

Rob Austin

Professor of Information Systems, Ivey Business School (Canada)

Robert D. Austin is a professor of Information Systems at Ivey Business School, and an affiliated faculty member at Harvard Medical School. He has authored papers in professional and academic venues, eight books, and more than 60 published cases and notes. His research on neurodiversity employment programs is funded by the Canadian government. More on her work on his web page.

Thorkil Sonne

Founder of Specialisterne Foundation (Social Enterprise HQ in Denmark)

Thorkil Sonne is the Founder and Chairman of Specialisterne Foundation. Specialist People Foundation is the owner of Specialisterne.
The goal is to provide meaningful and productive jobs for one million specialist people on a global scale. More on his web page

Moish Tov

Founder CEO and Chairman of JoyDew (USA)


Find out more about their work on their web page

Jose Velasco 

Program Director, Business Process Intelligence • Autism at Work Ambassador at SAP

Find out more about his work on their web page

Johan Wiklund

Professor of Entrepreneurship, Whitman School of Management, Syracuse University (USA)

Dr. Johan Wiklund is Professor at Syracuse University. His research interests include neurodiversity and mental well-being in entrepreneurship.  He is considered a leading authority in entrepreneurship research with over 100 articles and over 33,000 citations to his research. He is Editor-in-Chief for Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, a premier entrepreneurship journal. More on his web page