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Assistant Professor Jonathan Weigel<\/a>, who teaches business ethics to MBA students and studies how fragile states can build more accountable governance, has been named one of Poets & Quants\u2019 \u201cWorld\u2019s Best 40-Under-40 Graduate Business Professors of 2026.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Weigel was selected from more than 1,700 nominations from students, administrators, and faculty members at business schools around the world. Nominees were evaluated on teaching, research, and business impact.<\/p>\n Weigel has taught the core MBA course Ethics and Responsibility in Business since joining Haas in 2021. In his classes, he draws on more than a decade of fieldwork in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC)\u2014where he has spent years running large-scale experiments on taxation and governance in one of the world\u2019s most fragile urban settings. He also served as Faculty Director of the Center for Responsible Business<\/a> at UC Berkeley Haas and leads judging for the Haas Sustainable Business Research Prize.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat I enjoy most about teaching business students is the diversity of experience in the room,\u201d Weigel says. \u201cA student who has worked in conflict zones, another who has run a startup, and another who spent a decade in finance all bring different moral intuitions\u2014and those differences are the raw material of the best discussions.\u201d<\/p>\n In his research, Weigel founded ODEKA, a nonprofit that conducts large-scale randomized controlled trials embedded in the\u00a0DRC\u2019s provincial tax system. The organization employs more than 100 staff and contractors. His work\u2014which has spanned the DRC, Myanmar, Haiti, and Nepal\u2014has been published in leading journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the American Economic Review. He was awarded UC Berkeley\u2019s 2025 Philomathia Prize<\/a> for exceptional promise as an early-career faculty member.<\/p>\n \u201cI suppose I\u00a0do research in places where\u00a0not many\u00a0business professors work. But with extreme poverty increasingly concentrated in fragile states, I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0think we can afford to neglect these countries,\u201d Weigel said. \u201cI find running\u00a0ODEKA\u2014working with and learning from my\u00a0Congolese\u00a0partners\u2014to be the most rewarding part of my job.\u201d<\/p>\n