Dr. Lisa Jones Christensen is an organizational psychologist and entrepreneurship professor who studies what happens to leaders and organizations under sustained pressure.

She is the Lorin Farr Associate Professor of Management at the Brigham Young University Marriott School of Business, where she teaches entrepreneurship and serves as Director of Business for Good at the Ballard Center for Social Impact.

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As an organizational psychologist, her work focuses on trauma-informed leadership, human capital, and the hidden organizational costs of chronic pressure. She studies how sustained pressure quietly narrows decision-making, silences employee voice, and erodes the human capacity organizations depend on for sound judgment, innovation, and resilience.

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Her research has taken her into corporate leadership teams, refugee communities rebuilding after displacement, and entrepreneurial ecosystems across sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia. Across these very different environments, she has observed the same pattern: capable, well-intentioned people making decisions that do not reflect their best thinking once pressure becomes chronic.​ Not because they stopped caring. But because sustained pressure quietly narrows what people can see, think clearly about, and say.

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Lisa’s work helps leaders recognize these dynamics early and build organizations that remain clear-thinking, resilient, and innovative even when pressure is high.

She is the author of a forthcoming book on trauma-informed leadership for business leaders and managers, examining why pressure shuts people down and what effective leaders do differently.