Jacob Patrick Chestnut

Biography

Jacob P. Chestnut is an associate teaching professor at the Cornell Peter and Stephanie Nolan School of Hotel Administration, part of the Cornell SC Johnson College of Business. He joined the Nolan School faculty in 2018 after earning his Ph.D. in technology and operations management from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Chestnut holds a B.A., valedictorian, and an M.A., summa cum laude, in mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Chestnut’s research focuses on socially sustainable operations, examining how firms can “do well by doing good” by treating social sustainability as an opportunity for innovation. His work explores situations in which companies can improve social outcomes while simultaneously increasing profits or reducing costs, creating win win results for diverse stakeholders without relying on external intervention or competing objectives. He approaches these problems using methodologies such as mechanism design, stochastic dominance, experimental design and empirical estimation.

Much of Chestnut’s recent work centers on social sustainability in agricultural value chains, particularly coffee. This research forms the foundation of his popular course, The Business of Coffee: From Farm to Cup, which examines the operational, economic and social dynamics of the global coffee industry.

Chestnut’s research has received support from the National Science Foundation and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. His work has been recognized as a best paper finalist by the College of Healthcare Operations Management of the Production and Operations Management Society. He has published in the European Journal of Combinatorics and has additional work under review at Management Science.

Education

PhD Ross School of Business, University Of Michigan, 2019
MA University Of California, Berkeley, 2009
BA University Of California, Berkeley, 2007

Research

• Chestnut, Jacob; Sapir, Jenya; Swartz, Ed. "Enumerative properties of triangulations of spherical bundles over S1"European Journal of Combinatorics. 29.3 (2008): 662-671

Awards

• Finalist Best Paper Competition, College of Healthcare Operations Management (2017) Production and Operations Management Society
• Leabo Award for Excellence in Teaching (2016) Ross School of Business