I am a Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where I teach in both degree programs and Executive Education. I co-teach 15.390 Entrepreneurship 101: A Systematic Approach to New Venture Creation and design and deliver programs for senior executives on corporate entrepreneurship, innovation, and venture scaling. I hold a PhD in Management (Strategy and Entrepreneurship) from London Business School and a PhD in Transport Studies from the University of Oxford. My research has been published in Management Science and recognized with the 2021 SRF Dissertation Scholar Award (WMDRG) from the Strategic Management Society.

I study how entrepreneurs shape strategic outcomes under conditions of uncertainty, with a focus on how language in hiring, financing, and organizational design influences who engages with a venture and on what terms. My research develops the concept of symbolic sorting, showing how economically similar opportunities, when framed differently, can attract different types of participants and lead to systematically different outcomes. More broadly, I examine how communication and interpretation shape entrepreneurial resource mobilization, early team formation, and strategic decision-making. Across my work, I combine large-scale field settings with close engagement with startups to understand how real-world decisions unfold. While startups serve as a primary context, the findings speak more broadly to strategy and organizational behavior in uncertain, emerging markets.

My industry experience motivates my research and I aim to bridge theory and practice. I co-authored the 2024 State of ESOPs in Asia report with Saison Capital and Carta, documenting how startup equity pay practices shape talent attraction and retention across 160 ventures in India and Southeast Asia, which informs my dissertation. Before academia, I was an early startup employee at Grab (NASDAQ: GRAB), where I launched and led new markets as the Founding Country Heads of Thailand and Vietnam, later serving as Regional General Manager of GrabCar and the Founding Vice President of Public Affairs. In these roles, I built and scaled teams of over 200 employees across strategy, operations, fundraising and government relations. I was also an early investor in the company and continue to invest in and advise early-stage startups through CSVE Ventures. Beyond venture work, I served on the Extended Leadership Team and Startup Review Committee of the XA Network, Southeast Asia’s largest tech angel investor network, and as an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.  

I also hold a MPA in International Development (MPA/ID) from Harvard University, a MA in Education Leadership from the Teachers College at Columbia University, and a BSE in Bioengineering from the University of Pennsylvania. I am a first-generation college graduate and began my career as a special education teacher through Teach For America, teaching students with autism at an inner-city high school in Miami, FL.