Jennifer Aaker

In 2010, Aaker and her husband, startup advisor Andy Smith, authored the book The Dragonfly Effect: Quick, Effective and Powerful Ways to Use Social Media to Drive Social Change. With a title inspired by the dragonfly's unique ability to propel itself in any direction when its four wings worked in concert, the book examined the manner in which synchronized ideas can be used to create rapid transformations through social media. A literary award winner, The Dragonfly Effect has been translated into over 10 languages. In 2013, Aaker, Smith, and McCarthy published The Power of Stories, a companion to The Dragonfly Effect, which further explored social media through psychological insight and provided a hands-on tool to help companies put the model to work.

In 2002, Aaker shifted her research focus to understanding time, money, and happiness. In this work, she suggested that time is a resource that, like money, is not only important but more subjective than we think. In 2010, she published two papers with Sep Kamvar and Cassie Mogilner on the dynamic meaning of happiness. Prior research had suggested that the meaning of happiness is either similar across individuals or highly subjective and idiosyncratic. Aaker and her colleagues show that the answer lies between the two and that there is in fact a predictable shift in the meaning of happiness and how it is experienced over one's life and even within the day or week. The research also showed that the meaning of happiness that one holds impacts the choices people make.

Aaker began her academic career in 1995 as an assistant professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. In 1999, she returned to the Stanford Graduate School of Business as an assistant professor, was promoted to associate professor in 2001, and earned a full professorship in 2004. In 2005, Aaker was named General Atlantic Professor of Marketing. Her work has been published in scholarly journals in psychology and marketing and has been highlighted in The Economist, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, BusinessWeek, Forbes, NPR, CBS MoneyWatch, Inc., and Science. She serves as an advisory board member for several private companies.

Aaker was born in Palo Alto, California to Kay Aaker and David Aaker, a professor and brand consultant. Aaker attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied under social psychologist Philip E. Tetlock and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman, receiving a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology in 1989. In 1990, Aaker began postgraduate work at Stanford Graduate School of Business, earning a Ph.D. in marketing with a minor in psychology in 1995. Her dissertation on brand personality led to the publication of three academic papers in Journal of Marketing Research and Journal of Consumer Research and won several awards.

Jennifer Aaker (born 15 January 1967, California) is an American social psychologist, author, and General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Best known for her research on time, money, and happiness, Aaker also focuses on the transmission of ideas through social networks, the power of story in decision making, and how to build global brands across cultures. She is the recipient of the Distinguished Scientific Achievement Award from the Society for Consumer Psychology and the Stanford Distinguished Teaching Award.