## Shama Patel

Faculty Fellow

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![A headshot photo of a smiling Shama Patel taken against a studio backdrop](/sites/default/files/styles/small_230px_wide/public/2024-09/sp8533_0.jpg.webp?itok=CEQnUrmG)

**Joined Stern** 2024

**Leonard N. Stern School of Business**
Kaufman Management Center
44 West Fourth Street, KMC 8
New York, NY 10012

**E-mail** <sp8533@stern.nyu.edu>

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## Biography

Shama Patel joined the Stern School of Business as Assistant Professor/Post-Doctoral Fellow upon receiving the NYU Provost Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2024.

Shama is a scholar, educator, and practitioner working at the intersection of artificial intelligence, digital strategy, and organizational change. She teaches Digital Strategy to MBA students and is developing a new course on AI Ethics in Business and Society to equip leaders with the skills to navigate the social, technical, and regulatory dimensions of intelligent systems.

Her research investigates how AI and digital media influence civic engagement, institutional change, and organizational decision-making. Building on her PhD work on "affective contagion" in global movements, she studies how algorithmic infrastructures shape culture, participation, politics and power dynamics. As a member of the Post-Doctoral Council at NYU, she advocates for career flexibility, interdisciplinary collaboration, and visibility beyond traditional pathways.

Alongside her academic work, Shama brings two decades of leadership in digital transformation and organizational change across Fortune 500 and entrepreneurial environments. As the founder of Drive Change, she has assisted business leaders in driving technological change from ideation to implementation. Additionally, she has held leadership positions at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Accenture and United Airlines where she delivered large-scale digital transformation initiatives.

Patel holds a Ph.D. in Digitalization from the Copenhagen Business School, Denmark and an M.S. in Computer Science from Northern Illinois University, USA.

## Research Interests

- Digital Media
- Affective Contagion
- Artificial Intelligence
- Memes/Memetics
- Socio-Political Change
- Digital Transformation

## Courses Taught

- Digital Strategy

## Academic Background

**PhD, Digitalization**
Copenhagen Business School

**MS, Computer Science**
Northern Illinois University

**BS, Geology**
Delhi University

## Selected Publications

**Patel, Shama (2025)**
[Memetic contagion in the organizing of a political campaign: A study of Kamala Harris memes.](https://research.cbs.dk/en/publications/the-summer-of-2020-situating-digital-media-in-scaling-affective-c)

*Academy of Management Proceedings, 2025(1), 12567.*

**Patel, Shama (2023)**
[The Summer of 2020: Situating Digital Media in Scaling Affective Contagion: A Case of the George Floyd Video](https://research.cbs.dk/en/publications/the-summer-of-2020-situating-digital-media-in-scaling-affective-c)
*PhD Dissertation, Copenhagen Business School, Department of Digitization, Copenhagen, Denmark*

**Knudsen, Britta Timm and Shama Patel (2023)**
[Digital Media Revitalising Colonial Heritage: The George Floyd Video Translocalized in Denmark](https://doi.org/10.1080/13527258.2023.2231917)
*International Journal of Heritage Studies 29 (10): 1041–60*

**Patel, Shama and John Postill (2023)**
[How to Do a Digital Epidemiography](https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003253709)
*In An Ethnographic Inventory: Field Devices for Anthropological Inquiry, 1st ed., 62–72 London*

**Patel, Shama and Mattias Tinghøj Hansen (2022)**
[Material-Affective Assemblage Thinking in Researching Scalar Phenomena](https://aisel.aisnet.org/icis2022/adv_methods/adv_methods/7)
*In International Conference on Information Systems*

**Patel, Shama, Abayomi Baiyere, and Christian Garmaan Johnsen (2022)**
[Beyond Practice: Assemblage Thinking in Sociomateriality Research](https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2022_rp/108)
*In European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS)*

**Patel, Shama and Ionna Constantiou (2020)**
[Human Agency in the Propagation of False Information - A Conceptual Framework](https://aisel.aisnet.org/ecis2020_rip/22)
*In European Conference on Information Studies (ECIS)*

## Areas of Expertise

**Company**

- Drive Change
- Accenture
- Pricewaterhouse Coopers
- United Airlines

**Industry**

- Consulting
- Transit/Transportation

**Management**

- Digital Strategy and Transformation
- Leading Organizational Change

**Region/Country**

- United States
- Germany
- Denmark
- India

**Technology, Operations, and Statistics**

- Digital Strategy and Transformation
- Business Process Management (BPM)
- Organizational Change Management (OCM)