Jill Perry-Smith is an Associate Professor at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. Her research focuses on creativity and how whom you know makes you more or less creative. She has studied this topic for more than 15 years via field surveys and behavioral experiments. Her work explains how relationships shape an idea’s journey from concept on to one that changes the field. She has published numerous articles in her field’s most prestigious journals and has contributed to several books. She received her Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Georgia Institute of Technology.

Her interest in creativity started with her work experiences prior to academia. After earning a B.S. in civil engineering, she worked in project management for a multinational oil and gas company. She became fascinated by the people dynamics and the pursuit of creative problem solving.