Meet the Students
Maëlle Perez - Meet the Students - Ph.D.
Maëlle Perez
Maëlle A. Perez (HEC Lausanne MSc) has a professional background in working for leading technology companies and a deep academic focus on disruption theory, entrepreneurship, and strategic adaptation. Her career began in the tech sector, where she witnessed firsthand how emerging technologies reshape industries and redefine entrepreneurial opportunity. This experience now informs her research on how technologies—particularly artificial intelligence—transform organizational structures and challenge established firms. Her work explores how firms perceive and respond to disruption, and how AI can augment managerial decision-making in dynamic competitive environments. She is particularly interested in how new technologies enable necessity-driven entrepreneurship.
Currently a doctoral student at the Darden School of Business, Maëlle collaborates with leading faculty members, including Dr. Mike Lenox, Dr. Rory McDonald, and Dr. Saras Sarasvathy. Her research has been presented at prestigious conferences such as the Academy of Management and the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS). Maëlle co-authored a book chapter with Dr. Saras Sarasvathy titled “Stopping the Slide and Rising Above the Tide: Entrepreneurial Education to Move Out of Necessity into Opportunity,” published in Necessity Entrepreneurship: Getting Beyond the Binary (2025).
In her free time, Maëlle enjoys training for half-marathons with her best friend and finds joy in exploring new cultures through travel.
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