Valentina Assenova

Valentina A. Assenova is the Edward B. and Shirley R. Shils Endowed Term Assistant Professor of Management at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, where she is a Faculty Affiliate of the Mack Institute for Innovation Management, Penn Development Research Initiative (PDRI-Dev Lab), and Perry World House. Her research and teaching interests center on entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship. Dr. Assenova holds a Ph.D., M.A., and M.Phil. from Yale University, an M.B.A. with first-class honors in International Management from the University of Cambridge, and a B.Sc. in Economics with honors from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, where she was an Andrew W. Mellon Fellow and a Joseph Wharton Research Scholar.

At Wharton, she has developed and taught courses and seminars at the undergraduate, M.B.A., and Ph.D. levels. She has published award-winning research on issues related to early-stage startup formation, funding, and growth in leading disciplinary and interdisciplinary journals. Beyond Wharton, she has collaborated with organizations working to support founders and their enterprises, including FINCA International, the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation, and Google for Startups, on projects and initiatives that advance the quality and impact of entrepreneurship around the world. Her research has been covered by various outlets, including the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), The New York Times, Fast Company, Marginal Revolution, Wharton Business Daily, and The Brookings Institution.

Her scholarly pursuits center on three core themes: (1) the role of accelerators and incubators as tools for entrepreneurial learning and new enterprise development, (2) the role of formal and informal institutions in explaining variation in entrepreneurship and enterprise formation rates across countries and regions, and (3) mechanisms to support social enterprise and sustainability. By merging theory with praxis, her interdisciplinary approach provides a comprehensive view of the challenges and opportunities of early-stage startups and micro, small, and medium enterprises (SMEs) in varied institutional contexts.