Neelam Modi Jain

Neelam is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the Management Division at Columbia Business School and the Tamer Institute for Social Enterprise and Climate Change. She studies how social networks shape organizational and economic outcomes. Her work combines quantitative network analysis with field and experimental data to study mechanisms of influence, collaboration, and inequality at scale.

Her recent publications examine how persuasive messages circulating within community networks influence the adoption of controversial health practices, and how varying definitions of diversity within team networks shape their performance and collaboration over time.

Her current projects extend these relational perspectives to new contexts. At the macro level, she is studying how patterns of connectedness across neighborhoods in the U.S. predict entrepreneurial activity—and how entrepreneurship can serve as a tool for local governments to address deep-rooted spatial inequalities. At the micro level, she is investigating how students engage with AI tools in the classroom, including how AI use affects learning outcomes and when algorithmic feedback can outperform human feedback.

Together, her work shows how the social and technological networks surrounding people structure access to opportunity and success.