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| Dr. Dawn Rivers, Applied Business Anthropologist |
Believe it or not but businesses have a long history in employing anthropologists, and there are many reasons why. Anthropologists are useful in marketing and identifying customer wants and needs; designing better, more efficient products; understanding workplace environments; and more. There are many business anthropologists out there who either work for specific companies or work as independent contractors, and the featured applied business anthropologist actually has done both. This post will address the experience of Dr. Dawn Rivers, a small business owner turned applied business anthropologist.
Dawn Rivers was a successful business owner for over a decade. She managed her own publishing company, which produced a regular periodical dedicated to discussing microbusinesses, which are businesses with five or fewer employees. She collected all the information for the content of her publication, which included interviewing business owners and their employees (as applicable), producing the content, marketing the periodical, and distributing it. Her hard work provided her readers and herself greater insights into the motivations, community memberships, and challenges small business owners and employees faced.
It also inspired her to formally study these topics. She entered anthropology and economic programs at Hartwick College, where she earned high marks and graduated with her Bachelor of Arts in 2014. Upon completion of her degree she worked within workforce development for two years. This exposed her to the challenges that workforce development personnel face, along with the barriers working class individuals deal with in their professional and personal lives.
She returned to school two years later to earn her graduate degrees in anthropology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She earned both a master’s and Ph.D. Her master’s research focused on self-employed individuals, specifically addressing the challenges self employed individuals face both professionally and personally, and how self-employment changes individuals’ social behavior. She switched perspectives a little with her doctoral research, which examined employer owned businesses wherein only one person (the owner) was employed.
Upon graduating with her PhD she entered into the workforce, taking up employment as a consultant for a company that works with businesses in learning on how to improve their relationships with vendors, business partners, workers, or customers. The purpose of this is to help the client business realize that working with any of these entities requires relationships, and Rivers’ job is to instruct the client business on how to facilitate stronger relationships where all parties feel satisfied. As the client business improves satisfaction and fosters better relationships with their stakeholders (be it their employees, vendors, partners, or customers) they reap higher profits and decrease their risk. Rivers says that she uses ethnographic methods to understand where the relationships are and where the weaknesses are within those relationships. Once she identifies the problems she follows up by broadening her anthropological skills to strategize ways of improving communication and those necessary relationships.
Over her career Rivers has worked for various public business organizations and private businesses, but she is currently an independent contractor. She remains active in the field of anthropology, maintaining membership in various anthropological organizations. She presents her research at various conferences, as well as expands her network with both academic and applied anthropologists. This helps keep her skill sets and anthropological knowledge current, which serves her clients and makes her a valuable asset for those who she contracts with.
Works Cited
Introducing Dawn Rivers. Dir. Society for Economic Anthropology. Perf. Dawn Rivers. 2023. Electronic.
Rivers, Dawn. "Dawn Rivers." 26 July 2016. University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Electronic. 8 June 2023.
—. Dawn Rivers, Ph.D.: Development Consultant. 2022. Electronic. 8 June 2023.
—. Dawn Rivers: LinkedIn Profile. 2023. Electronic.
4 comments:
Rivers desire to continue her education and grow her knowledge as much as possible to continue bettering her business is very inspiring. She helped prove there there is always something you can improve on to become more successful and less ignorant. This also helped me realize that speaking to people solely in your field isn't always needed. You never really know what knowledge someone has that can be beneficial to you.
The post does a good of highlighting how Dr. Dawn Rivers uses business anthropology in her day-to-day entrepreneurial activities. Through the application of her knowledge, she helps businesses build connections with partners, suppliers, staff, and customers—all of which are essential to their success. This illustrates how anthropological findings have practical applications in the commercial sector.
The blog post does a great job of highlighting the role of anthropologists in business, focusing on the experience of Dr. Dawn Rivers, a small business owner turned applied business anthropologist.
-Ahmesha Johnson
I have read Dr. Dawn Rivers' bio and understand the importance of anthropologists in the business field. She learns from her own business experience, delves into it academically, and then applies that knowledge to real business situations. I especially find it interesting that she is helping companies improve their bottom line through stronger business relationships and better communication. Her approach of using fieldwork and ethnography to identify problems and devise strategies to solve them is also a good illustration of the value of anthropology in business. I felt, like Dr. Dawn Rivers, that an anthropological perspective on business issues will become even more important for more companies in the future.
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