Jill Avery

Dr. Jill Avery is a Senior Lecturer of Business Administration and C. Roland Christensen Distinguished Management Educator in the marketing unit at Harvard Business School. She is a recognized and respected authority on brand management, customer relationship management (CRM), and digital marketing. She brings a distinctive blend of skills and experiences to serve as an important bridge between the worlds of practice and academia. Prior to her doctoral studies, she was a distinguished consumer packaged goods (CPG) brand management executive who managed the Gillette, Braun, Sam Adams, and AT&T brands. She began her career on the agency side of the business, as an account executive creating and managing consumer promotions for blue chip CPG clients. Thus, it is in the real world where she first developed a passion for brands, lived the experiences that enliven and enrich her contributions in the classroom, and encountered the managerial questions that inspire and ground her research. Today, she remains close to practice by serving as a board member, consultant, educator, and advisor to companies and their executives. She is a Corporate Director and Chair of the Audit Committee of the Amica Mutual Insurance Company, an Independent Director and member of the Audit Committee at Kopin Corporation (NASDAQ: KOPN), President Emerita and a Trustee at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and a former Trustee of St. Paul's School.

She is a passionate and enthusiastic award-winning teacher and a creative and innovative course designer who is currently teaching two MBA courses, Marketing and Creating Brand Value at HBS. She is a popular instructor in Harvard Business School’s Executive Education programs and has led global executives in sessions on marketing and strategy in programs including Driving Digital Strategy, Taking Marketing Digital, Marketing in the Digital Era, Strategic Marketing Management, Global Strategic Management, Launching New Ventures, and Transforming Customer Experiences. She has also partnered with and developed custom executive education curricula for AB InBev, The Coca-Cola Company, Constellation Brands, Kellogg's, IBM, ANTA, Bacardi, HubSpot, Midea, Endeavor, YPO Gold, American Express, and National Arts Strategies.

She is a prolific and award-winning author of over 100 journal articles, book chapters, teaching cases, and technical notes on branding, CRM, and digital marketing, which are known for both their academic rigor and real-world relevance. Her research spans the worlds of academia and practice and has been published in the top academic marketing journals, including Journal of Consumer Research, Journal of Marketing Research, Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, and Journal for the Advancement of Marketing Education. She reaches a broader audience through managerial articles and case studies that bring her academic work into practice in Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, European Business Review, and Business Horizons. She is the coauthor of the edited book Strong Brands, Strong Relationships, published by Routledge. Her field research and teaching cases have sold over 1 million copies and are taught at the top global business schools, placing her as #13 (out of 8,000) on the list of bestselling case authors worldwide, and include cases on Kraft-Heinz, Nestlé, L'Oréal, Porsche, Pepsi, Budweiser, Marriott/Starwood, Longchamp, Nike, Glossier, Away, J.C. Penney, EMC, JP Morgan Chase, Shiseido, Tate Modern, Christie's, Shinola, Supreme, and the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

Her doctoral dissertation on online brand communities and digital marketing won the Harvard Business School Wyss Award for excellence in doctoral research and the Marketing Science Institute’s Best Paper Award for work published in the International Journal of Research in Marketing. Her work on omnichannel marketing and e-commerce was recognized with the Louis W. Stern Award from the American Marketing Association, in recognition for an outstanding article that has made a significant contribution to the literature on marketing and channels distribution. Her work on underdog brands and brand storytelling earned an honorable mention for best articles published in the Journal of Consumer Research in 2011. The Case Centre awarded her HubSpot case on digital marketing the Marketing Award in 2014, her Accor Hotels case on digital disruption and transformation the Overall Case Award in 2019, and her GAP case on big data and predictive analytics the Marketing Award in 2020. Her branding insights have been cited in Advertising Age, The Economist, The New York Times, The Financial Times, Forbes, The Atlantic, and Bloomberg/Business Week, among many other publications.

At HBS, she is an empowering and devoted mentor to MBA students and junior faculty and an active ally and advocate for diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. She is a 2018 recipient of the Robert F. Greenhill award in recognition for her service to the HBS community as faculty advisor to the Women’s Student Association, as faculty chair of convening and special events, as a Section Chair, and for her partnership with the HBS admissions office to develop and deliver programming to broaden and diversify the pipeline of MBA applicants.

She holds a Doctorate in Business Administration (marketing) from Harvard Business School, a MBA (marketing and finance) from the Wharton School, and a BA (English) from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining the HBS faculty, she was an assistant professor of marketing at the Simmons School of Management from 2007-2013, where she was awarded tenure and promotion to associate professor.