IFERA 2025 CONFERENCE

Ute Stephan is a Professor of Entrepreneurship at King’s Business School, King’s College London.

Ute’s research has won multiple international awards including the 2025 JIBS Decade award for her lead-authored paper ‘Institutions and Social Entrepreneurship’. She ranks among the top 2% of scientists worldwide based on citations to her work (Stanford study). She has been recognized for her scientific contributions as a Fellow of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) and a 21st Century Entrepreneurship Fellow. Her research has attracted over £3 million in funding from the European Commission, the UK Government, UK research councils, charities, and German government institutions. She is regularly invited to give keynote addresses at leading international conferences (examples here) and is interviewed on topics of entrepreneurs’ mental well-being, the psychology of entrepreneurship, sustainability, and societal impact (examples here). Her research has often been featured in the media including the Financial Times, The Guardian, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, WIRED, BBC, AlJazeera, Bloomberg, and others.

Ute currently leads a 25-country study involving over 5,000 entrepreneurs on Entrepreneurship & COVID-19, a project on women entrepreneurs’ wellbeing, and she was a lead investigator of the 10-country SEFORIS project which stands for Social Enterprises as a Force for Inclusive and Innovative Societies, and its predecessor the SELUSI project. She has led projects commissioned by UK Government Departments on social entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial aspirations.

She is an elected board member of the International Association of Applied Psychology (IAAP) and chairs the IAAP publication committee. She is also an IfM Research Fellow at the IfM Bonn – Institute fuer Mittelstandsforschung and Strategic Advisor to the Founder Mental Health Pledge.

As a thought leader in the Psychology of Entrepreneurship, Ute explores the human side of entrepreneurship and investigates how individuals and societies can thrive through entrepreneurship. Key themes in her research are (1) entrepreneurial well-being, stress, and mental health, (2) social entrepreneurship and inclusive business, and (3) national culture and institutions. She publishes in leading academic journals such as the Journal of Business Venturing (JBV), Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice (ETP), Annual Review of Organizational Psychology & Organizational Behavior, Journal of Management, Journal of International Business Studies (JIBS), and others. Ute currently serves as Associate Editor at two ABS4* journals, Journal of Management and Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. From 2015-2019 she was Editor-in-Chief of Applied Psychology: An International Review and from 2019-2022 Consulting Editor at the Journal of International Business Studies. Ute also serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, JBV, and ETP..

Shahzad Ansari is Professor of Strategy and Innovation Head of the Strategy and International Business subject group at Cambridge Judge Business School.

Professor Ansari has published in several leading academic journals including Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Strategic Organization, Research Policy, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Management Inquiry, Administrative Science Quarterly and Organization Studies. He serves on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management, Organization Science, Journal of Management Studies, Organization Studies and Research in the Sociology of Organizations, is a high-performing member of the Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM) at Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and is a Honorary Professor of UCL, London. He is also a consultant at Thinfilms, a New Jersey firm providing thin film services (in particular coating services) to over 150 corporations in the hybrid microelectronics, semiconductor, optical, medical and sensor industries.

Professor Ansari’s areas of expertise in executive education include strategic management, technological and business model innovation, social innovation, and corporate social responsibility. He has contributed to executive education programmes in many organisations, including McKinsey, Mastercard, Roche, Infosys, Airbus, Tencent, Everbright Group, Shell, British Telecom, China Development Bank, China Life, Nokia, Ericsson, Laing O’Rourke, Barclays Bank, Stonehage Fleming, Chaucer insurance, UNICEF, ICBC, China Minsheng Bank, Essex County Council, KLEC (Kuala Lumpur Education City) IIM, Calcutta, Karachi School of Business and Leadership (KSBL), Vodafone, Saudi Awwal Bank, The Nature Conservancy, and the Nigerian Ministry of Education and Development. He has consulted with several organisations including Shell, Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) and ABN-Amro (senior executives) and for various companies in Europe, India, Pakistan and China including finance, insurance, telecoms, FMCGs, and e-commerce/platform.

Mattias Nordqvist, PhD., holds the SEB Chair in Entrepreneurship and Family Business. He is a Full Professor in Business Administration at the House of Innovation (HOI), Stockholm School of Economics (SSE). Mattias teaching, research and outreach activities concentrate on entrepreneurship, strategic renewal and governance in private companies, in particular, family businesses. He focuses on both start-ups/new ventures and established companies.

Current research projects focus on new venture creation and governance, sustainability in large family-controlled businesses, entrepreneurship and strategic renewal in family businesses as well as the organization and role of family offices.

Mattias joined SSE and HOI in January 2020 from Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) where he was the Director of Center for Family Enterprise and Ownership (CeFEO), Professor in Strategy and Entrepreneurship and the Hamrin International Professor of Family Business. At JIBS he also served as Associate Dean, Program Manager and Co-director for many years. He served as a Co-director for a large global applied research project on family entrepreneurship (The Global STEP Project) at the Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, Babson College where he was also a visiting professor.

In 2019, Mattias was ranked among the top 25 most cited and published researchers within the social sciences in Sweden by the leading weekly news magazine Fokus. He has been listed as one of the world’s leading researchers and academics within the family business field in several international rankings.

Mattias teaches at master, executive and PhD levels. In addition to his teaching and outreach activities, Mattias regularly contributes to international conferences and he is widely published in leading journals within the discipline of management, including the fields of entrepreneurship and family business. For instance, his research appears in journals like Journal of Management, Journal of Management Studies, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Small Business Economics, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Long Range Planning, Human Resource Management Review, Family Business Review, Corporate Governance: An International Review and several others. He is the founding co-editor of Journal of Family Business Strategy and serves on several editorial boards. He has also co-edited several books, including the Sage Handbook of Family Business. Mattias has received several awards for his research, and multiple grants and donations for his research and teaching projects.

Mattias regularly serves as an advisor to companies and other organizations, and he often appears in media in relation to his core topics. A Swedish citizen, he has a strong international profile and holds guest lectures and gives keynote to both academic and practice audiences around the globe. In particular, he has lived and worked extensively in Southern Europe, North America, Latin America and Africa. In 2010, for instance, he initiated and launched, in collaboration with Sida, a major capacity building program in higher education in Ethiopia and Rwanda. A program that is still operative.