Biography

Dr. Ana María Peredo, Ph.D.

Ana María Peredo is Associate Professor of Entrepreneurship, Sustainability and International Business in the Faculty of Business at the University of Victoria and long time associate to the British Columbia Institute for Co-operative Studies.

Ana María’s research exploring the role of business in fostering sustainable communities, especially among poor and disadvantages peoples . She has published an impressive number of articles in leading academic journals, as well as chapters in important research anthologies on Community based enterprises, co-operatives, indigenous entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. In just the last five years, she has made more than 40 presentations and invited lectures in academic and community settings.

Her pioneering work introduced the concept of community-based enterprise to the academic business literature. Her article in one of our top journals, the Academy of Management Review, is a seminal piece that elaborates this approach to entrepreneurship and the generation and regeneration of economic activity in otherwise-impoverished communities around the world. Her publications there and elsewhere on this subject have had a large impact, including new sessions dedicated to “community-based enterprise” in major academic business meetings as well as special issues devoted to the subject announced by Entrepreneurship and Regional Development International and the Journal of Innovation and Regional Development

Ana María’s commitment to engaging business educators in thinking about management education in relation to the problems of poverty was recognized in her invitation to be guest editor for a special issue of the Journal of Management Education. She was asked to assemble an issue on the subject of management education in the context of poverty: a subject not prominent in the business literature, but of vital importance in considering business and sustainability. In this undertaking she was once again breaking new ground in management studies, expanding the concern for business as a tool for sustainable social development into the arena of management education.

Dr. Peredo’s active scholarly life has not replaced her lively involvement in the disadvantaged communities she writes about. Early in 2007 under a disemmination grant with the BCIC Institute she re-visited several of the Andean communities in which her work began, not only to continue her observation of the unique form of enterprising that goes on there but also to report to them on what she has learned from her experience with them and from other rural communities in British Columbia.

Dr. Peredo has collaborated  in attracting several grants to promote research into the potential role of enterprise among impoverished indigenous as well as non-indigenous peoples. She has been recognized on a global scale for her scholarship and commitment to the cause of poverty studies, entrepreneurship at the community level, and sustainable economic activity. She has been invited to exclusive conferences to present her work. She has been honoured by invitations from prestigious universities (e.g., Oxford, Cambridge, Michigan) to present her ideas.

Dr. Peredo has already won a number of prizes for her work: a Faculty of Business Research Award at UVic, The Western Academy of Management Ascendant Scholar Award, and a Visiting Fellowship at the Global Poverty Research Group at the University of Oxford.

This trajectory of scholarship has been closely paralleled by Dr. Peredo’s development as a teacher. Her signature course, “Global Sustainability and Local Communities”, builds on the idea that business people cannot disassociate themselves from their role as citizens. She explores with her students a variety of business models rooted in a diversity of social, ecological and cultural settings. Her aim is to sensitize students to the complex and dynamic relationship between businesses and the societies in which they operate, working with a rich conception of sustainability that incorporates social, environmental and economic elements. Students and colleagues comment on the way in which she expands concepts of business to encourage inventive thinking about what is possible in local business responses based on recognizing both local needs and market forces. A number of our graduates who have gone on to forms of enterprise with a distinct social aspect have cited the influence of Dr. Peredo in shaping their career choices.

*photo credit: UVic Photo Services