Jena Santi

Jena Santi is a PhD student in Accounting at Questrom School of Business. Her research lies at the intersection of financial accounting, corporate disclosure, and institutional investor behavior, with a focus on how informational, incentive, and political frictions shape asset managers’ influence on corporate outcomes. Prior to her PhD, she worked as a researcher and served as an advisor to the Portuguese government, contributing to fiscal policy design and the evaluation of public policies. She is an IMAP-sponsored IGS Graduate Student Summer 2026 Fellow.

Jena’s research will examine whether political pressure induces a divergence between asset managers’ visible ESG signals and their underlying portfolio holdings. Exploiting the enactment of Texas Senate Bill 13 as a quasi-natural experiment, she will investigate whether funds with exposure to Texas state pension systems reduce observable ESG engagement—such as support for shareholder proposals and ESG-related fund labeling—while maintaining ESG-aligned portfolios.