Shawn Cole is the John G. McLean Professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School, where he teaches and conducts research on financial services, impact investing, and Social Enterprise. He serves as faculty chair of the Social Enterprise Initiative.

Much of his research focuses on how finance can create value for individuals, firms, and societies. More recently, he has studied the role of digital delivery of advice, in a wide variety of contexts, including agricultural decision making.

A second focus is on sustainable and impact investing, where his work examines financial and social returns in both the United States and the world. He is an affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, on the board of the Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and the faculty lead on Corporate Engagement. He is an affiliate of Harvard’s Center for International Development.

His work on insurance earned the 2015 Shin Research Excellence Award; in 2015 he was also given a Faculty Pioneer Award from the Aspen Institute.

Outside of Harvard, he co-founded Precision Development, a non-profit organization that has delivered agricultural advice to over 10 million farmers, and serves on the board of Our Kids Read, a US-based literacy non-profit. He has served on the Boston Federal Reserve's Community Development Research Advisory Council, served as an external advisor to the Gates Foundation, and was the chair of the endowment management committee of the Telluride Association, a non-profit educational organization.