I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Management at Texas A&M's Mays Business School. Prior to joining Mays, I was on the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I received my PhD in Business Economics and Public Policy from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. My research focuses on human capital forces that drive entrepreneurial participation, performance, and innovation from three lenses—institutional and societal environments, firm strategy, and diversity. Linking macro patterns to micro behavior, my work exploits a variety of methods, including qualitative interviews, quasi-experimental methods, randomized experiments, big data analytics, and machine learning. My research is divided into three streams: (1) how institutional and societal environments that shape entrepreneur and joiner decisions (e.g., social safety nets, technology policies, and intermediaries) influence venture formation and outcomes, (2) how human capital strategy in entrepreneurial firms (e.g., work benefits, compensation structures, and contracts) affects organizational performance, and (3) how inequalities along the gender and race lines are produced for entrepreneurial workers in digital labor markets.

I have won a number of awards for my research, including multiple grants from the Mack Institute of Innovation Management, the Kauffman Knowledge Challenge grant for the study of entrepreneurship, the Co-Winner of the Wharton People Analytics Research Paper Competition, and a National Science Foundation award for investigating the impacts of social safety net policies on STEM entrepreneurship and innovation. I am also a coauthor of the American Angel Report, a comprehensive national study on angel investors who are crucial to the founding of high-growth startups.