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        • Celeste Diaz Ferraro

          PhD Candidate
          Management & Organization Studies
          Pennsylvania State University

          A scholar on a mission to leverage entrepreneurship & innovation research
          for human flourishing
          in more equitable, resilient & sustainable communities

          Research Interests

          My scholarly endeavors – research, teaching and public engagement – attempt to elevate human dignity and strengthen communities through a focus on entrepreneurship and social innovation. In my research, I explore dynamic processes of emergence and evolution, with a particular interest in the roles of power and agency in shaping fields, ecosystems, and the entrepreneurial opportunities within them.
           
          In my primary stream of work, I explore these phenomena using ethnographic methods, content analysis, and network analysis, contextualized in the field of genomic medicine. Through this work I come to understand genomics as an emergent interstitial field where meaning-making and power construct the new field's governance infrastructure, yielding a highly contentious moral market. Additional work in this stream, related to the phenomenon of datafication, is currently in second revision at Academy of Management Journal. An emerging series of projects (currently in data collection) explores the well-established field of psychotherapy and disruptions resulting from technological innovation and resurgence of interest in psychedelic substances.
           
          A second stream of research examines place-based entrepreneurial ecosystems, processes for scaling small- and micro-enterprises, and the role of micro-entrepreneurship in constructing resilient local economies, with emphasis on marginalized organizations and communities. Within these entrepreneurial ecosystems, such as in the emerging markets of Tunisia and Algeria, and in domestic immigrant ecosystems found in the Texas/Mexico borderlands, I examine alternate systems of value and culture and their relations to organizational innovation and resilience. In this stream, I am interested in exploring socio-political processes of conflict, collaboration and practice diffusion to support greater equity and inclusion in entrepreneurship, and greater well-being in local economies.
        • Current Projects & Affiliations

          Current Projects

          • Datafication and moral markets (2nd revise & resubmit)
          • Moral entrepreneurship and mechanisms of field emergence/change (in revision)
          • Socio-political processes of conflict management in alternative organizational models (writing)
          • The role of occupational/sectoral backgrounds in formation of ethical norms in emerging and dynamic fields (analyzing data)
          • Patient advocates as entrepreneurs: Organizational formation and transformation in place-based innovation ecosystems as the empowerment and co-opting of marginalized communities (data collection)
          • Policy white paper: best practices in organizational governance of genomic data for mission effectiveness, risk mitigation and retention of stakeholder trust (Farrell Center for Corporate Innovation & Entrepreneurship)

          In Development

          Dissertation:
          • Field emergence and institutional infrastructure development: A structurational view of genomic medicine’s governance
          • The search for "rare": How rare disease patient advocacy and genomic research co-evolved in place-based innovation eco-systems and humanized governance in an evolving field
          • Patient advocates as entrepreneurs: How Silicon Valley both empowers and co-opts marginalized communities
           
          Conceptual:
          • Rethinking field configuring events: The effects of technology and social media on processes of field change
          • Humanistic Management: a typology of paradigmatic research
          Empirical:
          • Scaling women’s entrepreneurship in Tunisia by fostering creativity and innovation: A field experiment
          • Entrepreneurial emergence in transitioning economies: Comparative case studies in Algeria, Cuba, Eastern Europe
          • Emergence and evolution of social enterprise activity: Collaborative economy activity in Algeria
          • Critical studies: Autoethnography of Humanistic Management as a responsible business social movement enacting paradigm shifts in management scholarship
          Seeking collaborators:
          • I have access to organizations and data in the rapidly transforming industries of cannabis products and psychedelic-assisted therapy. I seek collaborators who have an interest in examining multilevel processes of entrepreneurship and/or field change, and who may view these processes through such varied lenses as symbolic interactionism/pragmatism, STS, institutional theory/legitimacy, symbolic work, social movements, or stigma.

          Honors & Awards

          • 2019-2021 Humanistic Management Association Research Fellow
          • 2020 AOM OMT Doctoral Consortium selectee
          • 2020, 2019, 2018 Smeal Summer Research Grant Award
          • 2019, 2018, 2017, 2016 Smeal Small Research Grant Award
          • 2019 EGOS Doctoral Consortium selectee
          • 2019 AOM OMT Dissertation Consortium selectee
          • 2018 AOM Entrepreneurship Consortium travel grant
          • 2018 Gerald I. Susman Research Enhancement Award
          • 2016-2021 Bunton-Waller Fellow, Smeal College of Business
          • 2016-2017 Smith Mundt grant recipient, U.S. Dept. of State (Algeria)
          • 2015 Net Impact Diversity Scholar
          • 2014 PhD Project pre-doctoral conference travel grant
          • 2014-2015 Fulbright-Hays grant recipient, U.S. Dept. of State (Algeria)

          Affiliations

          Academic:
          • Academy of Management, Member (OMT, ENT, SIM, STR)
          • Strategic Management Society, Member (Cooperative Strategy, Stakeholder Strategy, Entrepreneurship, Knowledge & Innovation)
          • European Group for Organization Studies, Member
          • American Sociological Association, Member (Collective Behavior & Social Movements, Economic Sociology, Organizations Occupations & Work, Theory)
          • International Humanistic Management Association, PhD Network co-organizer
          • PhD Project Management Doctoral Student Association, Research Committee co-organizer
          Professional:
          • National Association of Hispanic Journalists, Lifetime Member
          • National Society of Hispanic MBAs (Prospanica)
          • Net Impact

          Courses Instructed and Prepared to Instruct:

          Undergraduate:
          Complex Negotiations (Fall 2020)
          Strategic Management (Fall/Spring 2019)
          Business, Ethics & Society (Fall 2018)
          Financing the Entrepreneurial Venture (Spring 2009)
          Innovation & Creative Problem Solving (Fall 2009)
           
          Graduate & Executive Education:
          Entrepreneurial Formation & Social Innovation (Summer 2015, 2017)
          MBA Marketing Core (Spring 2009)
        • La Mia Filosofia:Ubuntu

          “Ubuntu is a South African ethical ideology focusing on people's allegiances and relations with each other. The word comes from the Zulu and Xhosa languages.”a “It is often translated as 'I am because we are' and also 'humanity towards others' but is often used in a more philosophical sense to mean "the belief in a universal bond of sharing that connects all humanity.”b
           
          “It speaks of the very essence of being human... it is to say, my humanity is caught up, is inextricably bound up, in yours. We belong in a bundle of life. We say a person is a person through other persons. It is not I think therefore I am. It says rather: I am human because I belong, I participate, and I share. A person with Ubuntu is open and available to others, affirming of others, does not feel threatened that others are able and good, for he or she has a proper self-assurance that comes from knowing that he or she belongs in a greater whole and is diminished when others are humiliated or diminished, when others are tortured or oppressed, or treated as if they were less than who they are.” -Archbishop Desmond Tutuc

          Thoughts on measuring “growth”​ and “performance”

          “But even if we act to erase material poverty, there is another greater task, it is to confront the poverty of satisfaction - purpose and dignity - that afflicts us all. Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things.

           

          Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children.

           

          Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.”

          ― Robert F. Kennedy

          Thoughts on living with integrity

          Mueren lentamente quien se

          transforma en esclavo de los hábitos,

          quien no se arriesga,

          quien evita una pasión,

          quien no arriesga lo cierto,

          por lo incierto...

          quien abandona antes de empezar,

          quien se queja de su mala suerte,

          quien no viaja, ni lee, quien no sueña,

          quien no confía, quien no lo intenta,

          quien no ama (...)

          lo contrario es estar vivo.

          ― Pablo Neruda

           

          This is what you shall do... love the earth and sun and the animals, despise riches, give alms to every one that asks, stand up for the stupid and crazy, devote your income and labor to others, hate tyrants, argue not concerning God, have patience and indulgence toward the people, take off your hat to nothing known or unknown or to any man or number of men, go freely with powerful uneducated persons and with the young and with the mothers of families, read these leaves in the open air every season of every year of your life, re-examine all you have been told at school or church or in any book, dismiss whatever insults your own soul, and your very flesh shall be a great poem and have the richest fluency not only in its words but in the silent lines of its lips and face and between the lashes of your eyes and in every motion and joint of your body.

          ― Walt Whitman

          Thoughts on building a career in the Academy

          AMBITION

          by David Whyte
           

          Ambition is a word that lacks ambition: ambition is frozen desire, the current of a vocational life immobilized and over-concretized to set, unforgiving goals. Ambition may be essential for the young but becomes the essential obstacle of any mature life. Ambition abstracts us from the underlying elemental nature of the creative conversation while providing us the cover of a target that becomes false through over description, over familiarity or too much understanding.

           

          The ease of having an ambition is that it can be explained to others; the very disease of ambition is that it can be so easily explained to others. What is worthy of a life’s dedication does not want to be known by us in ways that diminish its actual sense of presence. Everything true to itself has its own secret language and an internal intentionality with a secret surprising flow, even to the person who supposedly puts it all in motion. Ambition ultimately withers all secrets in its glare before those secrets have had time to come to life from within and then thwarts the generosity and maturity that ripens the discourse of a lifetime’s dedication to a work.

           

          We may direct the beam of ambition to illuminate a certain corner of the future world but ultimately it can reveal to us only those dreams with which we have already become familiar. Ambition left to itself, like a Rupert Murdoch, always becomes tedious, its only object, the creation of larger and larger empires of control; but a true vocation calls us out beyond ourselves; breaks our heart in the process and then humbles, simplifies and enlightens us about the hidden, core nature of the work that enticed us in the first place. We find that all along, we had what we needed from the beginning and that in the end we have returned to its essence, an essence we could not understand until we had undertaken the journey.

           

          No matter the self-conceited importance of our labors we are all compost for worlds we cannot yet imagine. Ambition takes us toward that horizon, but not over it - that line will always recede before our controlling hands. But a calling is a conversation between our physical bodies, our work, our intellects and imaginations, and a new world that is itself the territory we seek. A vocation always includes the specific, heart-rending way we will fail at our attempt to live our lives fully. A true vocation always metamorphoses both ambition and failure into compassion and understanding for others.

           

          Ambition takes willpower and constant applications of energy to stay on a perceived bearing; but a serious vocational calling demands a constant attention to the unknown gravitational field that surrounds us and from which we recharge ourselves, as if breathing from the atmosphere of possibility itself. A life’s work is not a series of stepping-stones, onto which we calmly place our feet, but more like an ocean crossing where there is no path, only a heading, a direction, in conversation with the elements. Looking back we see the wake we have left as only a brief glimmering trace on the waters.

           

          Ambition is natural to the first steps of youth who must experience its essential falsity to know the larger reality that stands behind it, but held onto too long, and especially in eldership, it always comes to lack surprise, turns the last years of the ambitious into a second childhood, and makes the once successful into an object of pity.

           

          The authentic watermark running through the background of a life’s work, is an arrival at generosity, and as a mark of that generosity, delight in the hopes of the young: and the giving away to them, not only of rewards that may have been earned but the reward in the secret itself, the core artistry that made the journey a journey. Perhaps the greatest legacy we can leave from our work is not to instill ambition in others, though this may be the first way we describe its arrival in our life, but the passing on of a sense of sheer privilege, of having found a road, a way to follow, and then having been allowed to walk it, often with others, with all its difficulties and minor triumphs; the underlying primary gift, of having been a full participant in the conversation.

           

          ‘AMBITION’ From CONSOLATIONS: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. © David Whyte and Many Rivers Press 2015
        • Deep professional experiences inform

          my scholarship and enrich my classroom

          I am a first generation college graduate, a daughter and grand-daughter of immigrants, and prior to entering academia was a national award-winning advocate and a strategic communications leader in both the private sector and government. I held management or strategy roles in the hospitality, technology, and consumer goods industries, while working with global marketing firms, state and federal legislative and executive branch agencies, and global multilateral development organizations. I also co-founded a social enterprise consulting firm to support nascent mission-driven firms during early-stage growth. In these varied roles, I have been directly involved in issues related to corporate-level and business-level strategy, stakeholder relations, emerging markets, sustainability, micro-enterprise operations, and social innovation.
           
          Through these professional experiences I became interested in social movements, values, power, change, conflict, and processes of institutionalization and paradigm change. I bring multi-faceted management perspectives and professional networks into the classroom, where students benefit from my deep engagement and ability to connect current research and theory with real-world application. Equally important, my professional experience drives my interest in research that supports the field of management in addressing "grand challenges" while generating both theoretical and practical impact.

          Analyst with consulting firm specializing in policy, management & operational needs of U.S. government clients.

          Founder & Principal of management consulting firm serving social entrepreneurs.

          Global Brand Marketing Team Leader. IFC is the World Bank Group's private sector development arm, a leading investor in emerging markets, and global standard-bearer on corporate sustainability.

          Director of Communications, Office of the Governor, Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration.

          Group Account Director; strategic direction for clients including Denny's, Dell, General Motors & Belo Corp. Prior account management: Texaco, Anheuser-Busch, U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.

          National Brand Manager; U.S.' largest chain of corporate-owned/operated hotels.

        • I tweet about #FirstGenDocs, #SocialInnovation, #WellBeingEconomy, #ResponsibleInnovation, #Sustainability. And other random stuff.

        • LET'S CONNECT

          cmd68@psu.edu
          WhatsApp
          PaxMundi on Twitter
          Celeste Diaz Ferraro on LinkedIn
          Follow me on Google Scholar
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