Summer R. Jackson
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Organizational Behavior Unit, Harvard Business School
Organizational Ethnographer & Economic Sociologist
Organizational Inequality · Race, Class & Gender at Work
Diversity & Inclusion · Human Capital Management · Sociology of WorkResearch Focus
I study how organizations try to create opportunity — and why those efforts often unfold in ways standard explanations miss.
I am an organizational ethnographer and economic sociologist at Harvard Business School. My research examines how organizations try to create opportunity and why those efforts often unfold in ways that standard explanations miss—because people interpret policies, platforms, advocacy, and interpersonal repair through moral and relational frames.
Across my work, I show that inclusion is not only a matter of designing better policies, programs, or tools. It also depends on how people interpret those interventions morally, how they navigate relationships across difference, and how organizational systems shape the meaning of our identities (e.g., race, class, and gender) at work.
A little about me
Before academia, I worked at the U.S. State Department — in Washington, D.C. and around the world — before deeper questions about identity at work led me to a Ph.D. at MIT Sloan
Why My Research Matters
Organizations often search for solutions to inequality in new tools, policies, programs, and systems. My research shows why these solutions cannot be understood apart from the meanings people attach to them.
A diversity recruitment platform can be rejected not because managers are indifferent to diversity, but because its design makes race feel commodified. Advocacy can fail not because advocates lack commitment, but because influence tactics can easily be misread as cooptation and generate mistrust with the very person being helped. A workplace microaggression can damage a relationship, but it can also become a moment of repair or adaptation when both parties move beyond self-protection.
Taken together, my work develops a relational theory of organizational inequality: opportunity is shaped not only by formal structures or individual bias, but also by the moral meanings, interaction patterns, and everyday work through which people try to make inclusion real.
A little about me
I’m a multiracial woman who grew up internationally — always navigating different dimensions of my identity, which became a motivating factor in the set of questions I now study.
2025
Inclusive Practice Senior Fellow, Harvard Inclusive Teaching Institute
2024
Runner Up - Administrative Science Quarterly Dissertation Award
2020
Winner — INFORMS/Organization Science
Dissertation Proposal Competition
Selected Research
(Not) Paying for Diversity
A diversity recruitment platform can be rejected not because managers are indifferent — but because its design makes race feel commodified.
Triadic Advocacy Work
Advocacy can fail not for lack of commitment — but because helping someone through a system can generate mistrust with the very person being helped.
It Takes Two to Untangle
A microaggression can damage a relationship — or become a moment of repair and adaptation when both people move beyond self-protection.
Media Highlights
