Robin J. Ely is an American economist currently the Diane Doerge Wilson Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School.^[1] Her interest are gender and race relations.^[2] Her most cited academic paper in the field, "Making differences matter" (with DA Thomas) in the Harvard Business Review, has been cited 1770 times, according to Google Scholar,^[3] and her analysis has been published in The Washington Post.^[4]

She earned her B.A. from Smith College and her Ph.D. in organizational behavior from Yale University.^[5]

• DA Thomas, RJ Ely, Making differences matter, Harvard Business Review, 1996 Sep;74(5):79-90.
• RJ Ely, DA Thomas, Cultural diversity at work: The effects of diversity perspectives on work group processes and outcomes,'Administrative Science Quarterly, 2001 Jun;46(2):229-73.
• Thomas Kochan, Katerina Bezrukova, Robin Ely, Susan Jackson, Aparna Joshi, Karen Jehn, Jonathan Leonard, David Levine, David Thomas, "The effects of diversity on business performance: Report of the diversity research network," . Human Resource Management , 2003 Mar 1;42(1):3-21.
• RJ Ely, "The power in demography: Women's social constructions of gender identity at work," Academy of Management Journal 38, no. 3 (1995): 589-634.