Zanele Rydh (Lurafu)

Doctoral Candidate, Business Administration

Zanele Rydh is a PhD Candidate and Lecturer in Business Administration at Jönköping International Business School (JIBS) and a member of the Media, Management and Transformation Centre (MMTC). Her research explores identity, motivation, and coping in social entrepreneurship, examining how founders sustain moral purpose, learning, and resilience under conditions of adversity and institutional complexity.

Zanele holds an MSc in Strategic Entrepreneurship for International Growth from Halmstad University (as a Swedish Institute Scholar) and a BTech in Marketing from the Cape Peninsula University of Technology in South Africa. Before joining academia, she worked as a Brand Strategist and Channel Executive, collaborating with C-level clients on market research and strategic communication for major brands.

Her work highlights the human side of entrepreneurship—how purpose-driven founders sustain impact amid uncertainty—and contributes to understanding how education and policy can better support entrepreneurs’ motivational and learning capacities.

MMTC’s interdisciplinary focus on transformation and purpose is an ideal environment to connect identity and meaning-making in entrepreneurship to broader questions of leadership, change and resilience.

Read more about Zanele's research and publications here

Zanele has written a series of blog posts for the Jönköping University blog platform Vertikals.

Blog post 1: Social entrepreneurship is the key driving force in reaching the 2030 Agenda

Blog post 2:  "It’s time to reassess the SDGs’ role and take climate change seriously!"