Introducing Dr. Latha Poonamallee, Associate Professor of Management and Social Innovation

 

Latha previously served as tenured Associate Professor in the School of Business and Economics at Michigan Technological University. During her time there, she founded and directed the university’s Center for Social Innovation. Dr. Poonamallee’s scholarly work is focused on examining and enabling alternate forms of organizing. Her work explores how, when, and why people come together for collective action to challenge dominant paradigms and create alternate models of human endeavor, especially in the margins. She is passionate about creating, nurturing, and supporting new organizational alternatives that promote just, sustainable, and prosperous society and using interdisciplinary approaches to innovation. To facilitate such interdisciplinary collaborations, she founded the Participatory Action Research Network for Social Innovation (PAR-SI) that brings together scholars and practitioners from various disciplines, world regions and substantive areas of interest to learn more about how to solve social and environmental problems using an interdisciplinary approach to social innovation.

As an action researcher, Dr. Poonamallee’s work bridges the divide between research and practice, with community and organizational engagement becoming the crucible for knowledge creation and change towards collective advancement. Her theory-to-practice translation approach has been acknowledged by the Academy of Management with the Robert Chisolm Award. She has built several partnerships between US and Indian community and academic entities in community organizing for social innovation and environmental sustainability.

Dr. Poonamallee is also a social entrepreneur. Her social venture, In-Med Prognostics L3C is working on bringing affordable brain health prognostic tools to emerging markets. In-Med was selected as the global finalist in the Falling Walls Science-Based Venture Competition in Berlin, Germany. 

Dr. Poonamallee received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University, M.B.A. from Pondicherry University, and B.A. from University of Madras.

Please join me in welcoming Latha to Milano. 

Sincerely,