Jessica J. Santana

Dr. Jessica Santana is an Assistant Professor in the Technology Management Program at UC Santa Barbara, where she studies the role of networks in innovation and entrepreneurship. Her recent research explored how entrepreneurs use peers and rhetoric to navigate sensemaking and stigma following startup failure. She also investigates the relationship between innovation and ethics in contexts such as synthetic biology and cryptocurrency crowdfunding. Her work is driven by insights from organizational theory, economic sociology, social psychology, and network science. She relies on a variety of methodological approaches, including experimental, statistical, and computational analyses. Her research is informed by her prior experience working in the types of organizations she studies, from Silicon Valley startups to Nicaraguan farming cooperatives. Jessica holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University and a Master of Information Management and Systems from UC Berkeley’s School of Information, with certification in the Management of Technology from the Haas School of Business.