Jenny Chu promoted to Professor of Financial Accounting

Cambridge Judge Business School is delighted to announce the promotion of Jenny Chu to Professor of Financial Accounting, effective 1 October 2025.

Jenny joined Cambridge Judge in 2011 as an Assistant Professor in what was then a joint Finance and Accounting subject group. Jenny then helped build a thriving dedicated Accounting subject group, helping to recruit both senior and junior colleagues to the Business School.  She is currently Associate Professor in Accounting, with academic interests ranging from corporate and sovereign disclosure to corporate governance issues.

Jenny becomes the first female Professor at Cambridge Judge in the Finance and Accounting areas, and, in the research-focused faculty track, the Business School’s first homegrown female Professor who started her academic career at Cambridge Judge.

Jenny combines academic excellence with an infectious enthusiasm for teaching.

Gishan Disssanaike, Dean of Cambridge Judge Business School

“Jenny combines academic excellence with an infectious enthusiasm for teaching, and Cambridge Judge is really pleased that she has earned this promotion,” said Professor Gishan Dissanaike, Dean of the Business School. “Jenny’s research has been published in some of the leading accounting and management journals, and she has worked tirelessly with research centres and colleagues at the Business School. We are really fortunate to have Jenny here at Cambridge Judge.”

From Silicon Valley to Cambridge

Jenny brings both academic and practical professional experience to her teaching and research at Cambridge Judge. She earned both an MBA and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley, and was previously in investment banking at Credit Suisse (now UBS) in Silicon Valley and portfolio management at the hedge fund division of Barclays Global Investors (now Blackrock).

Among Jenny’s recent publications are:

• an examination in the Review of Accounting Studies of innovation disclosures in voluntary new product announcements, finding that stock prices react more positively to announcements with more extensive innovation disclosure
• an investigation in Management Science of the market consequences of sovereign accounting errors, which found an abnormal increase in sovereign bond yields in certain circumstances including when the errors relate to recent fiscal data
• an exploration in the Journal of Management Studies of the link between CEO core self-evaluations (CSE) and strategic risk-taking, which found that high CSE CEOs are responsive to environmental cues

In addition to her publication in leading academic journals, Jenny’s research and expertise has been featured in elite business outlets such as the Financial Times, Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

Jenny is Deputy Director of the Centre for Financial Reporting and Accountability (CFRA) at Cambridge Judge. She is also a Fellow of the Cambridge Endowment for Research in Finance (CERF), and a member of the Cambridge Wo+Men in Leadership Centre Research Network at the Wo+Men’s Leadership Centre of Cambridge Judge, where she was formerly Academic Director. Jenny’s awards and honours include a J M Keynes Fellowship in Financial Economics Award from the University of Cambridge, a Cambridge Judge Business School Teaching Award in both 2013 and 2019, and a Best Paper Award from the European Accounting Review for a 2022 study entitled ‘Auditor university education: does it matter?’