People

“I am extremely grateful to be at HBS, not just because of the work that we do, but because of the people who make up this community.”

A blended course of study is nothing new for Ryann (she/her) - she earned her undergraduate degree in Economics and English at Williams College, and wrote her honors thesis on children’s literature. “That may not appear to be a common coupling,” she says, “but to me it makes a lot of sense. Economics looks at the architecture and mechanics of systems, and English provides the stories of the people who populate those systems. Similarly, my PhD program sits at the crossroads of management and sociology.”

Ryann says that she was drawn to Harvard’s Organizational Behavior program because of this emphasis on interdisciplinary research. Another big draw was discovering the work of her eventual advisor, Ryan Raffaelli, the Marvin Bower Associate Professor of Business Administration at HBS. “I came across his name in an article about his research on the resurgence of independent bookstores,” says Ryann. “A light went off in my head, and I realized that this was a field where I could merge these two halves of myself.”

In between Williams and HBS, Ryann spent four years working in economic consulting and research in New York City. This enabled her to experience organizational dynamics up close, and to develop her own lens through which to view these topics. “Organizational systems have a mixture of simplicity and complexity that’s always compelled me,” she says. “There are fundamental constraints, but there is also room for innovation. If I had to find a throughline from children’s literature to management theory, it would be that each toes that line between discipline and imagination.”

Although she learned a great deal during her time in the private sector, Ryann was grateful to re-enter the academic community. “Everyone here has their own unique background and perspective on the world,” she explains. “Part of the beauty of academia is that there is room for intellectual freedom, but also a sense that we are part of a shared endeavor.”

Research

Ryann’s research explores how industries and organizations emerge and evolve, with a focus on the role of collective meaning-making. Her PhD qualifying paper is a longitudinal study of social resistance to technology in the toy industry. Together with Professor Raffaelli, she has written about how independent bookstores were able to resurge in the United States despite the rise of Amazon. She also works closely with Professor Frank Dobbin in Sociology and Professor Tiona Zuzul in the Strategy unit at HBS.