melanie

University of Cambridge, Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior, 2016. Committee: Martin Kilduff, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks, Paul Tracey

University of Michigan, Stephen M. Ross School of Business, Management & Organizations, Pre-Doctoral Fellow, April 2015 – June 2016 (w. J. Sanchez-Burks) funded by the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts

University of Cambridge, Masters in Innovation, Strategy and Organization, 2011

University of Heidelberg, B.Sc. in Social Psychology, 2010

Melanie Milovac is currently a postdoctoral scholar at Washington University in St. Louis. Her research focuses broadly on how people evaluate entrepreneurs, entrepreneurial teams and their creative ideas for new businesses. Milovac’s research also examines how framings of performance narratives influence people’s forecasts of others’ future performance. Milovac’s studies have identified implicit affect theories that guide judges’ forecasts about the performance of entrepreneurs. These implicit theories are often in conflict with espoused beliefs about the ideal entrepreneurial affect while developing their venture. This research was supported by a research grant from NESTA (http://www.nesta.org.uk/). Her work on diverse entrepreneurial teams has shown complex relationships in how people perceive think about the ideal team composition in terms of gender and expertise. Milovac is a currently co-PI on a grant from the Kauffman Foundation focused on understanding entrepreneur mentors. Milovac has been invited to present this work at several conferences and universities.

Download Milovac’s CV here

Publications

Milovac, M. & Sanchez-Burks, J. (2014). Positivity Makes for Poor Pitches: Affective Tone Conveyed by Entrepreneurs Shapes Support for Creative Ideas. In John Humphreys (Ed.), Proceedings of the 74th Annual Meeting of the Academy of Management. Online ISSN: 2151-6561. Download paper here

Selected Talks

  • 2016   University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, College of Business, Organizational Behavior Group
  • 2015  Harvard University, Harvard Business School, Entrepreneurial Management Unit
  • 2015  Washington University in St. Louis, Organizational Behavior Group
  • 2015  University of Michigan, Psychology Department, Social Psychology Seminar
  • 2015  University of Michigan, Psychology Department, Decision Consortium
  • 2014  University of Michigan, Center for Positive Organizations
  • 2014  University of Michigan, Ross School of Business, Management & Organizations Group

Selected Honors and Awards

  • Kauffman Foundation Grant (w. J. Sanchez-Burks, D. Brophy & T. Jensen)
  • National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (sole applicant)