Shawn Cole is a professor in the Finance Unit at Harvard Business School (HBS), where he teaches and conducts research on financial services, social enterprise, and impact investing. He has taught FIN1 and FIN2 in the core curriculum, Business at the Base of the Pyramid, and courses on impact investing, as well various executive education courses. He currently teaches the PhD development sequence in the department of Economics. Much of his research examines corporate and household finance in emerging markets, with a focus on insurance, credit, and savings. He has also worked extensively on financial education in U.S. and emerging markets. His recent research focuses on designing and delivering advice and education over mobile phones, with an emphasis on agricultural and financial management.

He has worked in China, India, Indonesia, South Africa, and Vietnam. He is an affiliate of the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development. He is on the board of J-PAL as the co-chair for research. Prior to HBS, Professor Cole worked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in the economic research department. He has served on the Boston Federal Reserve's Community Development Research Advisory Council as well as an external advisor to the Gates Foundation and was the chair of the endowment management committee of the Telluride Association, a nonprofit educational organization. He is a cofounder and board chair of the nonprofit Precision Agriculture for Development.

Shawn received a Ph.D. in Economics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2005, where he was an NSF and Javits Fellow, and an A.B. in Economics and German Literature from Cornell University. His work on insurance earned the 2015 "Shin Research Excellence Award." The same year, he was also received a “Faculty Pioneer Award” from the Aspen Institute.