Joel Adams

Prof. Adams teaches courses on business and technology ethics and ethical design. He spent fifteen years in new ventures and policy work before academia, including cofounding and leading a spirits company and an education reform non-profit. He researches normative alignment in artificial intelligence systems and entrepreneurial cognition and action under uncertainty.

Joel Adams

Joel Adams

Assistant Professor of Business Administration

Curriculum Vitae

Program Affiliations

Professor Adams joined the Washington and Lee University faculty in 2024 from Indiana University. He teaches courses in business ethics, ethical business design, and the ethics of intelligent technology, and he leads a spring term abroad in Japan. He is interested in entrepreneurship as a liberal art, a practice through which students examine the world and find a meaningful place in it by pursuing their own visions. He has taught entrepreneurship and related courses across five institutions of higher learning for more than a decade.

Prior to academia, Professor Adams cofounded a spirits company, ran a consulting practice, led communications and strategy for a technology venture, and served as executive director of a state education policy association. He also spent five years teaching the regulatory side of the distilled spirits industry to graduate students and later to working professionals at Beam Suntory.  

Professor Adams’s research interests span entrepreneurial action and rationality, the role of vision and commitment in venture creation, and the ethical design of intelligent technology. His work has appeared in Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice and Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research. 

Education

  • Ph.D. in Management and Entrepreneurship, Indiana University (2025) 
  • M.A. in Humanities and Civic Leadership (Philosophy and Linguistics), University of Louisville (2018) 
  • M.B.A. in Entrepreneurship, University of Louisville (2007) 
  • B.A. in Philosophy, University of Louisville (2002) 

Research 

  • Entrepreneurial action and rationality 
  • Vision, values, and commitment in venture creation 
  • Ethical design of intelligent technologies 

Teaching

  • BUS 2400 Ethics, Business, and Society 
  • BUS 3870 Ethical Business Design 
  • BUS 3908 Ethics for Intelligent Technologies 
  • BUS 363 Global Issues in Business Ethics: Japan