I am a PhD candidate in Strategy and Entrepreneurship at London Business School and a Lecturer at the MIT Sloan School of Management, where I co-teach 15.390 Entrepreneurship 101: A Systematic Approach to New Venture Creation during the 2025–2026 academic year. 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 organizations attract and evaluate talent under conditions of uncertainty, with a focus on how symbolic signals in hiring and compensation shape labor markets, identity, and organizational design. My job market paper, “Symbolic Sorting in Hiring: A Field Experiment on Equity Compensation Framings,” develops the concept of symbolic sorting to explain how identical opportunities, when framed differently, lead candidates to interpret the same contract in divergent ways. Drawing on a randomized field experiment that I conducted within the live recruitment process of an early-stage startup, I show how framing equity compensation as “investment” versus “ownership” segments candidates into distinct orientations toward risk, belonging, and organizational alignment. Theoretically, this study demonstrates how practices commonly treated as incentive mechanisms also operate as symbolic devices that structure labor market sorting before material outcomes are realized. More broadly, my research examines how labor market practices function not only as economic incentives but also as symbolic signals that shape participation, persistence, and the futures organizations imagine for themselves. 

My industry experience motivates my research and I aim to bridge theory and practice. 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 am currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Martin Trust Center for MIT Entrepreneurship.  

I hold a PhD in Transport Studies from the University of Oxford's School of Geography and Environment, a MPA in International Development 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.