Elizabeth Lingo

How do leaders work across disciplines, organizations, cultures, and networks to co-create and implement novel solutions, sustainable human-centered change, and entrepreneurial ventures? Over the past twenty years, this question has motivated Elizabeth’s research, innovative project-based teaching, and efforts to advance organizational transformation and policy change to forge more equitable and creatively vibrant organizations, cities, and fields of enterprise.

As an ethnographer of work and organizations, Elizabeth is especially interested in the situated and lived experience of everyday work, and inductively analyzes qualitative data to build new theory and unexpected insights. Her scholarship is primarily process-focused, and offers three major contributions to the field: 1) launching a stream of research on creative brokering that informs how leaders advance entrepreneurial opportunities and novel outcomes within networks; 2) illuminating the micro-processes that enable low-power and under-represented actors to advance change and innovation; and 3) exploring how digital technology both constrains and enhances creative work.

Elizabeth’s research has been published in top-tier journals including Administrative Science Quarterly (ASQ), Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies, Harvard Business Review, Poetics, Work and Occupations, and the Chronicle of Higher Education and featured in the New York Times, The Guardian (UK), Forbes, Fortune, and BBC Global news. She was recognized in the ASQ Editor’s Choice Collections as authoring one of the top papers focused on networks and knowledge.

Elizabeth is Co-PI on two National Science Foundation ADVANCE grants, including the Adaptation grant, “Advancing toward “FULL” Representation of Women in STEM at WPI” and the Partnership grant, “ImPACT: Increasing the Participation and Advancement of Women in Information Technology. As a co-PI on WPI’s ADVANCE Adaptation grant from the National Science Foundation (2018-2021), Elizabeth is investigating structural and systemic biases and barriers within Associate-to-Full promotion processes, with a particular interest in the transformative role of department heads. This work has great potential to lessen inequity among the senior ranks of faculty, better align rewards with institutional missions and strengths, and develop a national model for other STEM and project-based academic institutions.

Education

• PhD Harvard Business School (1998 — 2005)
• Masters Harvard University
• Vanderbilt

Companies

• Assistant Professor, Organizational Behavior, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2016)
• Adjunct Professor of Innovative Leadership, Creative Enterprise and Entrepreneurship Strategic Design MBA for Hybrid Thinkers (2012)
• Visiting Assistant Professor Worcester Polytechnic Institute (2015 — 2016)
• Embedded Practitioner in Entrepreneurship and Social Innovation Mount Holyoke College (2014 — 2015)
• Researcher Harvard Business School (2014 — 2015)
• Research Fellow Curb Center for Art, Enterprise and Public Policy (2005 — 2013)
• Founding Director, Curb Programs in Creative Enterprise and Public Leadership Vanderbilt University (2008 — 2013)
• Founding Director, Vanderbilt Creative Campus Initiative Vanderbilt University (2008 — 2013)

Skills

• Management
• Strategic Communications
• Writing

Other

Creative Solutions, Qualitative Research, University Teaching, Leadership Development, Data Analysis, Editing, Program Development, Non-profits, Social Media, Community Outreach, Event Planning, Strategic Planning, Grant Writing, Fundraising, Nonprofits, Higher Education, Program Management, Teaching, Entrepreneurship, Research, Public Speaking, Leadership