2026 Best 40-Under-40 Business Professors: Jetson Leder-Luis, Questrom School of Business, Boston University

Jetson Leder-Luis
Questrom School of Business
Boston University

“Jetson Leder-Luis is one of the rare young business-school professors who combines transformative impact on students with high-impact research. His research is shaping how policymakers and practitioners think about fraud, regulation, and public-program oversight. In the classroom, he rebuilt our MBA core data analytics course, combining rigor with high levels of student engagement, causal inference around practical, real-world applications. In DC, he currently serves as Senior Advisor for Healthcare Fraud at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. His policy-facing work has already influenced recommendations such as MedPAC’s stance on hospice care. What makes him especially memorable is the combination: a high-demand, skill-building classroom presence; a top-tier research portfolio; and unusually direct public-policy impact for a professor at this stage of his career.” – Barb Bickart, Senior Associate Dean Academic Programs; Keith Ericsson, Professor & Department Chair, & Cathy Fazio, Associate Dean, MBA Programs

Jetson Leder-Luis is an Assistant Professor of Markets, Public Policy and Law at the Boston University Questrom School of Business, as well as a professor by courtesy at the Boston University Department of Economics and at the School of Law. He is also a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economics Research. His research addresses fraud in public programs and business-government interaction more broadly. 

Jetson’s research on fraud, especially in the health care industry, has been featured in leading academic journals such as The Journal of Political Economy, The American Economic Review, and the Review of Economics and Statistics. It has also been covered by popular news outlets and podcasts such as The New Yorker and Bloomberg Odd Lots. This research examines the effects of anti-fraud policy on businesses that provide public services, with a particular focus on the financial incentives and industrial organization effects of government actions.  

Beyond academia, Jetson has undertaken extensive public policy engagement. Jetson currently serves as the Deputy Executive Director of the White House Anti-Fraud Task Force and previously served as the Senior Advisor for Healthcare Fraud at the US Department of Health and Human Services.  In these roles, he translates his research findings into policy to help eliminate public program fraud while ensuring services remain available to legitimate beneficiaries. 

Jetson grew up in a low-income single-mother household in Yonkers, New York, and was a graduate of the REACH Prep program to bring underserved youth to prep schools. He graduated The Masters School in Dobbs Ferry, New York and attended Caltech on a full ride as a Stamps Scholar, graduating in 2014. He received his PhD in Economics from MIT in 2020 and joined Boston University the same year as an assistant professor. Jetson has earned multiple teaching awards across his career, including the MIT Levitan Teaching Award, the Broderick Award for Excellence in Teaching and the Core MBA Faculty Award at BU Questrom.  

BACKGROUND 

At current institution since what year? 2020 

Education: PhD in Economics, MIT 2020 

List of MBA/graduate business courses you currently teach: QM 716, Business Analytics: Data Analysis and Risk,  a required course in Questrom Full-Time MBA, First Semester  

TELL US ABOUT LIFE AS A BUSINESS SCHOOL PROFESSOR 

I knew I wanted to be a business school professor when …  I have always loved teaching and research, and I fell in love with business education when I realized it placed such a high premium on both. Coming out of a hardcore tech undergrad program, research was always primary, often to the exclusion of quality teaching. In contrast, my background in performing arts makes me love the “stage” experience of the classroom. Business school encourages a very dynamic style of teaching. I am thrilled when students find the topics engaging and exciting, particularly when I’m teaching statistics and data analysis. 

What are you currently researching and what is the most significant discovery you’ve made from it? I’m completely obsessed with fraud in public programs. My work focuses on three complementary pieces: the detection of fraud using statistics; the causal effects of public policy on fraud; and the effects of these anti-fraud policies on beneficiaries. The biggest finding so far has been my comparison between up-front prevention and ex-post enforcement, published in the Journal of Political Economy (2025). The research shows that prevention is much more effective, especially when you have frauds committed by many small firms or individuals. This idea overturns traditional thinking about anti-fraud tools, and I have used it as a launching point for my public policy engagement.  

If I weren’t a business school professor…  If I weren’t a professor, I’d probably be a choral conductor. I love choral conducting, and spent most of high school (and college) buried in rehearsals for Haydn, Brahms, Schubert, Mozart and the like. I was the assistant conductor for both my high school and college choirs, and the director of 3 different a cappella groups. My mom was a professional jazz musician, and I steered away from music as a career because it’s a very difficult field to make a living. Nevertheless, the allure is still there, and I still perform with the Metropolitan Chorale of Brookline.  

What do you think makes you stand out as a professor? In addition to the “performance” aspect of the classroom, I bring a genuine interest in my students that allows me to engage them as individuals. Classroom education happens in the context of our students’ lives. I encourage my students to come and meet me, share about themselves, talk to me about their dreams and their fears. Correspondingly, I bring a lot of “myself” to the classroom. I end up mentoring or advising a lot of our students, and I think that the personal aspect of the education makes it a space where students can overcome their limitations, especially around tough math concepts.   

Here’s what I wish someone would’ve told me about being a business school professor:  It’s so much fun! Being a professor feels like being in school – I am responsible for the production and propagation of knowledge. The academic cadence is so beautiful, with a constant stream of classes, research seminars to attend or to deliver, papers to write.   

Professor I most admire and why:  Jim Poterba, Professor of Economics at MIT and President of the NBER, is someone I deeply admire. Jim was my doctoral advisor, and he is both a first-rate scholar and an incredible human being. Not only is he immensely smart and hard working, balancing a full-time MIT job with running the NBER, he is also genuinely kind, serving as an advisor to more than 80 PhD students over his career and changing the lives of every one. I am honored to be named among his students and strive to be more like him.   

What do you enjoy most about teaching business students? I love how our students come from all walks of life. I will have students in my classroom who are very talented in their fields – pharmacists and engineers and artists – coming back to school to learn the business skills to supercharge those other talents. It makes for a really exciting classroom environment. 

What is most challenging? I want to spend time with each of my students to get to know them and help them. With 100+ students in the MBA cohort, all of whom take my class, it’s hard to find enough time to be available to all of them.  

When it comes to grading, I think students would describe me as…  Challenging but fair! Every problem I give in class, on problem sets, or on my exams is within what the students have learned, but often requires them to extend their thinking or understanding.  

LIFE OUTSIDE OF THE CLASSROOM 

What are your hobbies? I have far too many hobbies. I compete in Men’s Physique, a form of bodybuilding, and sing in a classical choir. I am currently trying to get better at playing Bach on piano, and I am reading through the complete works of William Shakespeare. I am also the father to a 9-month-old daughter. In my spare time, I love to cook.  

How will you spend your summer? I am currently serving as the Deputy Executive Director of the White House Task Force to Eliminate Fraud. I will spend the summer at the White House, leading anti-fraud policy changes across the government.  

Favorite place(s) to vacation: I’m an avid travel backpacker. Epic experiences include riding horses in Kyrgyzstan and camping in the Simien Mountains of Ethiopia.  

Favorite book(s): East of Eden by John Steinbeck 

What is your favorite type of music or artist(s) and why? I’ve been listening to a lot of Bob Dylan recently. The 1960s American Folk music scene was just so genuine and beautiful. But in terms of lifetime love, I can’t get away from Haydn. 

THOUGHTS AND REFLECTIONS 

If I had my way, the business school of the future would have much more of this…  Economics! I believe that economics is a fantastic framework not just for understanding business costs and profits, but also many of the other business school competencies. The causal inference framework is critical for rigorous social science, and I am excited to see how it has permeated finance, accounting, and marketing research. I believe it could form an even stronger part of our business education.  

In my opinion, companies and organizations today need to do a better job at… 
Managing path-dependence. So many processes are done because “that is the way we’ve always done it.” Full engagement with technological progress, particularly the benefits of machine learning, AI, and data science, will require careful introspection of the processes underlying both production and decision-making. 

I’m grateful for… My incredible wife Caroline. We met at Caltech, and she is now a senior software engineer at Amazon. I am so proud of her and always inspired by her work ethic and talent. I couldn’t do what I do without her.  

 

DON’T MISS: THE ENTIRE 2026 ROSTER OF THE WORLD’S BEST 40-UNDER-40 GRADUATE BUSINESS PROFESSORS 

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