Biography

Professor Jessica Sowa received her Ph.D. in Public Administration in 2003 from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. Her research focuses on public and nonprofit management, with an emphasis on the management of human resources (HRM) in government and nonprofit organizations, organizational effectiveness, and collaboration.

Sowa’s work has been published in a number of public and nonprofit journals, including Public Administration Review, Nonprofit Management and Leadership, Policy Studies Journal, Public Performance and Management Review, Administration and Society, Public Personnel Management, American Review of Public Administration, Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly and the Review of Public Personnel Administration. With Jessica Word, she is the editor of The Nonprofit Human Resource Management Handbook: From Theory to Practice (CRC Press/Routledge), which won the 2019 Best Book Award from the Section on Personnel Administration and Labor Relations (SPALR), American Society for Public Administration.

With Mary Guy, she is the author of Human Resource Essentials for Public Service:  People, Process, Performance (Melvin and Leigh Publishers), which won the 2023 Best Book Award from the Section on Personnel Administration and Labor Relations (SPALR), American Society for Public Administration.

With Jone Pearce, she is the author of Organizational Behavior and Management: Real Research for Public and Nonprofit Managers, 2nd edition (Melvin and Leigh Publishers).

With Staci Zavattaro, Alexander Henderson, and Lauren Hamilton Edwards, she is the editor of Serving in Silence: The Untold Stories of Essential Public Servants (SUNY Press).  

Current projects include a co-authored book (with Jaclyn Piatak), Volunteer Management: A Strategic Approach (Routledge) and research projects on volunteer management in fire departments, compensation and total rewards in nonprofits, and HRM in local government. She is the co-editor-in-chief of Perspectives on Public Management and Governance. She was editor-in-chief of the Review of Public Personnel Administration from 2018 through 2023. In 2024, she was selected as a National Academy of Public Administration Fellow. 
 

Degrees

• PhD, Public Administration, Syracuse University (2003) 
• MPA, University of Tennessee, (1999)
• BA, University of Massachusetts Amherst

​Research Interests

Human resource management, nonprofit management, public management, public administration, organization theory, volunteer management, social equity.

Websites

Jessica Sowa LinkedIn