RESEARCH
RESEARCH
From Joiners to Founders: Startup Employment and Underrepresented Entrepreneurs. Strategic Management Journal, 2025. Finalist, 2026 Bradford-Osborne Research Award. With Travis Howell, Chris Bingham, and Sekou Bermiss.
Representation among technology founders is very skewed by race and gender. In this study, we suggest one way that may help a very underrepresented group, Black women, create startups at higher rates. By analyzing the careers of 8000+ individuals interested in entrepreneurship, we show that working as a startup employee encourages many to start their own companies. However, this effect is stronger for Black women than for those from other demographic groups. Our rich, in-depth qualitative data suggest that, compared to other groups, Black women engage in greater levels of self-reflection and so become more motivated to transition from being a joiner in a startup to a founder of one.
Gender, Race, and the Cofounding Decision for Tech Founders. In progress: analyzing data. With Alicia Sheares and John Alimi (Stanford).
Whether to start a company alone or with cofounders, and with whom, is one of the earliest decisions founders make. We examine how founders' gender and race shape that decision, drawing on ~100 interviews with Black and White technology founders. We find that even after gaining access to elite networks comprising top human capital, aspiring Black founders do not select founders from these networks. We expand research on entrepreneurship by examining race not just as a demographic trait of a team, but as a structural determinant of the strategic choice to form a team.
From Vanderbuilt to Musk: Entrepreneurial Practice and the Organizational Elite. Theory paper, being reworked after review at the Academy of Management Review. With Alexander Lewis and Ray Fang.
Why are many of the world's most powerful figures entrepreneurs? We develop a theory about why entrepreneurs are over-represented among the social elite. Drawing from organization theory and sociology, we explain how entrepreneurial expertise can unlock boundary-spanning power unavailable to the traditional "corporate elites", the main characters of prior studies on elites.
Culture Emergence in New Ventures. Under review: 3rd R&R at the Strategic Management Journal. Finalist, Ed Schein Best PhD Paper Award; Giarratani Rising Star Award. With Chris Bingham and Chad Hartnell.
Culture is central to all organizations and their outcomes, yet we know surprisingly little about how they emerge. Using an inductive longitudinal research design to study eight nascent technology companies over 22 months, we generate a theory showing how both founders and their employees are critical to shaping culture. We show how many "best practices" (e.g., hiring for fit, founder clarity about cultural values & efforts to instill the culture, etc.) may lead to undesirable cultural outcomes.
Who Should Become a Business School Associate Dean? Individual Performance and Taking on Firm-Specific Roles. Academy of Management Journal, 2021. Lee & Wahal Award, Kenan-Flagler. With Jeff Dyer, David Kryscynski, and Shad Morris.
Should both high and low performers make firm-specific investments? To answer this question, my coauthors and I analyze the careers of 4100 business school professors from 1990-2017. Surprisingly, we find that low- rather than high-performers (researchers) are most rewarded for making firm-specific investments (becoming associate dean).
"'Cause if I were a Man": Using Counterfactual Approaches to Estimate Individual-Level Gaps in Management Research. Working paper. With David Kryscynski and Jeroen Neckebrouck.
We introduce a novel empirical approach that uses labor economics counterfactuals to create "imaginary twin" predictions and directly estimate individual-level categorical disparities in real-world organizations. Applying it to Belgian payroll data, we reveal substantial within-firm variance in gender pay gaps that traditional averages mask. This unlocks new pathways to study how individual-level disparities affect employee behavior and firm outcomes.
Getting Away with It: Unpacking the Relationship Between Individual Gender Pay Gap and Firm Departures. In progress. With David Kryscynski and Jeroen Neckebrouck.
Can organizational conditions hide gender pay gaps from employees? Leveraging proprietary payroll data for 38% of Belgium’s companies from 2016-2023 (1.78M employee-year observations) and granular occupation codes, we examine the relationship between actual pay gaps and employee exits and sick days. Specifically, we show how “opaque organizational conditions” —like high growth or pay dispersion— weaken the relationship between gender pay gaps and employee withdrawal behaviors
AWARDS
Finalist, Bradford-Osborne Research Award, 2026 (From Joiners to Founders)
Research Fellow, Center for Black Entrepreneurship, 2025
Finalist, Ed Schein Best PhD Paper Award, 2023 (Culture Emergence in New Ventures)
Giarratani Rising Star Award, Industry Studies Association, 2023
Dare to Care Dissertation Scholarship, Responsible Research in Business & Management, 2023
Peggy Lee & Sunil Wahal Award, UNC Kenan-Flagler, 2021 (Associate Dean paper)
SELECT RECENT TALKS
2026: Academy of Management, "Emerging Techniques for Measuring Founder Demographics at Scale"; Equitable Opportunities Conference, McGill; AOM Entrepreneurship Junior Faculty Consortium (invited)
2025: Industry Studies Association, MIT, "Culture Emergence in New Ventures"; INQUIRE, Illinois, "Gender, Race, and the Cofounding Decision for Tech Founders"; Center for Black Entrepreneurship Symposium
2024: People and Organizations Conference, Wharton, "Startups as a Path to Entrepreneurship for Black Women"; Michigan POS Incubator Series; AOM culture symposium, "Culture Emergence in Technology Ventures"