About Me

I grew up in Fort Myers, Florida, and later moved to Provo, Utah, to attend Brigham Young University, where I earned both my bachelor’s and master’s degrees in accounting. After graduation, I began my career in Dallas, Texas, working in Deloitte’s Tax Technology Consulting Group. In 2021, I relocated to Athens, Georgia, to pursue my doctoral studies.

My research examines how organizational systems and evolving team structures shape employee behavior, collaboration, and performance. Within this broad area, I focus on two interrelated themes: (1) how managers control, report, and communicate employee performance, and how these practices influence employee motivation and performance; and (2) how hierarchical team collaboration is evolving in today’s landscape of expanding knowledge and shifting expertise, and strategies for navigating these changes. Although my formal training is in experimental methods, I also conduct research using qualitative semi-structured interviews and field studies. This methodological breadth enables me to select the approach that best addresses each research question, deepens my understanding of organizational systems and team structures, and provides experience generating knowledge that is both theoretically meaningful and economically significant.

In my dissertation, I use an experiment to investigate whether informal control systems can improve employee creative performance by first cultivating employee curiosity. Although firms value creativity, they often struggle to improve it. Drawing from prior research, I argue that stimulating cognitive and motivational processes that underpin creativity—such as curiosity, the focus of my study—may be more effective than targeting creative performance directly. I find that informal control systems can cultivate curiosity, which significantly improves creative performance on an unrelated task.

Beyond my academic work, I enjoy ballet, both water and downhill skiing, exploring new foods and drinks, and perfecting my banana pudding recipe.