The story of a transformation consultant turned researcher-practioner
Sixteen years ago, Jiejing Chen was offered a PhD in artificial neural networks — what the world now calls machine learning, and later still, AI. He was young, the money in business was good, and the world was open—so he said no.
He has spent the intervening years building a career across oil and gas consulting in Houston, post-merger integrations across continents, a venture-backed startup that failed — as, he notes, 99% of startups do — and finally his own transformation consulting firm in Singapore, where he works primarily with companies navigating digital transformation in the age of generative AI. In 2022, when his mother fell terminally ill and he stepped back from the high pressure of private equity, he found himself reassessing what meaningful work actually looked like.
“Something closer to me,” he says. He found the DBA.
The Doctor of Business Administration offered him something a PhD could not: a path back into research as a practitioner, not a student. He had been in consulting for over a decade, he knew the problems his clients faced, and so he wanted to examine them at a level deeper than business would allow.
What surprised him, once he was inside the program, was what came back. Sixteen years in the corporate world had asked him to ship fast, move to the next milestone, deliver and repeat. The DBA asked something different. “It’s not just doing stuff,” he says. “You’re thinking at a higher level. You just feel like — wow, it’s an epiphany.”
His research examined the financial impact of generative AI adoption on small and medium enterprises in Southeast Asia — the exact market he serves as a consultant, and the exact question his clients are currently asking. He has since begun adjunct lecturing at college level and is working with fellow graduates to submit papers to international journals.
He graduated in San Francisco — the heartbeat of the global AI industry — with his brother, a computational biologist based in the Bay Area, in the audience.
“It’s one big circle for me,” he says. “Doing fundamental research and tying it back to my professional life.”
The circle took sixteen years to close.
Jiejing Chen completed the Doctor of Business Administration through Golden Gate University’s online DBA program — a fully accredited, fully online doctorate for working professionals.
Learn more about GGU’s DBA program and discover other learner stories →
