Please provide a brief overview of your research and/or creative work. You are welcome to focus on your most current work or, if you prefer, any particular work you’d like to highlight.
I have the pleasure of partnering with researchers around the world to conduct research on employee well-being by pulling back the curtain on the many roles we play in our lives. Instead of focusing exclusively on traditional business outcomes such as profit and productivity, I collaborate with colleagues to bring light to employees’ multi-faceted roles and identities and explore the intersections between their work and family lives. Seeing employees as whole people is how we can humanize workplaces and dignify work that occurs outside of offices and in people’s homes.
I am most energized by the research I have been conducting with colleagues on couples. I’m fascinated by how partners come together, the different identities they develop, and how their relationships change over time. I’ve worked with researchers to theorize typologies of couples based on career and care, study couples during pregnancy and reentry into work after parental leaves, and analyze how couples challenged parenting and work norms during the early months of COVID-19. Currently, I am working on a series of studies to investigate how couples collaborate (or not) to set goals, make decisions, and manage their resources at the intersection of their work and family lives.
What inspired you to pursue this area of study or creation?
It is my love of research that initially led me to explore an academic career. After spending more than ten years in marketing research and communications roles in Washington DC and Chicago, I decided to embark on a new career path in academia. After wrestling with the meaning of my work, I left agency life and pursued a PhD in Organizational Behavior to better understand how we can create better workplaces for all.
More personally, I was raised by women and men who, like many, had to make challenging work and family decisions. As a child, I watched my grandmother stay late after school and grade her students’ homework at the kitchen table. I observed my mother raise my brother and I as a single parent, return to college when we were in grade school, and, ultimately, become one of the only women partners at a global accounting firm. I saw the struggles my father experienced when he left his family and partner and moved across the country to pursue a promotion at work. These early experiences made me acutely aware that work and family are not distinct parts of our lives. Rather, our work and family roles and experiences are deeply intertwined and need to be considered in tandem when trying to improve employees’ well-being.
What impact do you hope your work will have on your field and/or the broader
community?
When I interviewed at USF’s School of Management in 2015, it was immediately evident that people here share the understanding that we need to recognize one another as whole people and not simply as “workers.” On the flight back to Chicago, I knew this was where my family and I needed to be because it was a place that would not only tolerate but, more importantly, encourage me to research “non-traditional” business issues that center employees as human beings. I hope that the work I do with colleagues helps empower people to craft careers and family paths that enable them to have full, unique, and dynamic lives.
How has your involvement with CRASE influenced and enhanced your professional
journey?
Being part of CRASE is a joy because positive social processes help us to generate impactful research. I am thankful to the center’s founding members who recognized the need to bring folks together from across campus and to celebrate different forms of research, scholarship, and art and put in the care to create such a special space. I am inspired by colleagues who continue this legacy of leadership and community and to those who show up to put important ideas out into the world.