I am a PhD candidate in Management 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 entrepreneurs shape strategic outcomes under conditions of uncertainty, with a focus on how symbolic language in hiring, financing, and organizational design decisions influences who engages with a venture and on what terms. My job market paper, The Framing Paradox in Entrepreneurial Strategy: A Field Experiment on Equity Compensation in Startup Hiring, develops the concept of symbolic sorting to explain how economically identical opportunities, when framed differently, elicit systematically divergent responses from prospective collaborators. Drawing on a randomized field experiment embedded in the live recruitment process of an early-stage technology startup, I show that framing identical equity compensation packages as opportunities to “co-own” versus “invest in” the venture, led experienced and startup-exposed candidates to lower their compensation demands, while less experienced applicants raised theirs. Theoretically, this study demonstrates that practices often treated purely as incentive mechanisms also operate as symbolic instruments of strategy, structuring entrepreneurial labor market sorting before material outcomes are realized. While startups serve as an illustrative context, the findings reveal how symbolic framing can shape entrepreneurial resource mobilization and early team formation—core levers of strategy in uncertain and 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 am 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.