Melissa Cardon is the James A. II & Natalie L. Haslam Distinguished Professorship in Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. She is also a Clark Family Faculty Fellow. She studies the psychology of entrepreneurs as they found, persist and succeed (or not) with their ventures. Topics of special interest include entrepreneurial passion, emotion, resource acquisition, persistence, exit, failure recovery and learning, stress, burnout and exhaustion, as well as coping mechanisms to address pervasive problems.

Her work has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Venturing, Entrepreneurship: Theory and Practice, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Management, Human Resource Management Review and Human Resource Management. She is an associate editor for the Academy of Management Review and on the editorial boards of the Journal of Management, Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, Journal of Management Studies and Human Resource Management Review.