Boston University Questrom School of Business
Kelli Questrom Associate Professor of Management and Organizations
Faculty Director, Social Impact Program
Director, Susilo Institute for Ethics in Global Business
Rodrigo studies how individuals can purposefully change complex organizations or systems, with a special interest in the role of institutions for economic development. Rodrigo's work explores how individuals’ backgrounds, professional identities, and organizational positions affect how they relate to existing structures and the strategies they pursue to change them. His work contributes to a deeper understanding of the mechanisms that allow institutions to operate and change. Rodrigo has done work in entrepreneurial finance and microfinance, in the nature of startup jobs, as well as in the institutional implications of the Mexican war on drugs. His current research focuses on two broad streams. The first explores transdisciplinary collaborations that seek to solve grand challenges. For example, intersectoral collaborations that seek to integrate rigorous evidence into development policies and practices. The second explores how to build effective, resilient, and trusted justice system organizations (including the police and civil courts).
Rodrigo is faculty director of Questrom’s Social Impact Program. Before, he was Associate Professor of Organizational Behavior at the Yale School of Management, where he taught the Innovator Perspective. His research has been funded by the Merida Initiative / INL, USAID, and other foundations. He sits in the advisory board of the Dalai Lama Center for Ethics and Transformative Values at MIT; he spent the 2014-2015 academic year advising the Mexican government on the US-Mexico bilateral relationship; and sits in the Board of Trustees of the Nature Conservancy.