Dr. Chia-Jung Tsay is the new Associate Professor in the Management and Human Resources Department at the Wisconsin School of Business. Chia, the Bruce and Janice Ellig Professor in Management, is a highly accomplished professor with a Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior and Psychology, as well as a Ph.D. in Music, both from Harvard University. She also holds degrees from Juilliard School and the Peabody Conservatory of the Johns Hopkins University. She has served as faculty member and taught at institutions including Oxford, Tsinghua, University College London, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Wharton School of Business, and John Hopkins University. This past year, she was named as one of Poets & Quants “World’s Best 40 Under 40 Business School Professors.” She was also recognized as an Association for Psychological Science Rising Star. The primary focus of her research is the psychological processes that influence decision making about performance, specifically the role of perception expertise and nonconscious biases in professional selection and advancement.
Chia’s research allows her to combine her unique perspective of being a performing musician with her passion for examining the psychological processes that we use to judge performance. Her most recent research examined how stage presence and passion of entrepreneurs impacted their success when pitching their startups to investors during pitch competitions. She found that the silent visual performance of entrepreneurs pitching allowed people to be better able to identify the actual winners of competitions than the content of the pitches She found that the silent visual performance of entrepreneurs pitching mattered more than the actual content of the pitch to investors judging the competition.
I also asked Chia if she had any advice for students given her varied background and her career advice was that “There may be expectations that there’s a linear pathway to certain types of achievement or success. I’ve come to the perspective that there are many pathways to discovering what feels meaningful to a person. I can understand that pursuing entrepreneurial activities can feel risky; regardless of outcome, these valuable experiences can still be integrated into meaningful careers.”
Here’s to welcoming Chia to our Badger family. We look forward to the many great things she will accomplish during her time here.
Categories: