Portfolio
This collection demonstrates the variety of perspectives and methods I’ve used to complete social research projects with various goals and objectives. I’ve attached PDFs of each example, so feel free to peruse what you find in those links! Reach out if you have questions, comments, or just want to chat about work I’ve done.
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Happy reading!
Professional Research & Consulting Projects
Check out examples of research projects I've led which blend rigorous social science research methodology and Design Thinking.
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Academic Research Projects
Read the social science research and theory papers I wrote in grad school with the guidance of professors from Brandeis, Harvard, MIT, and Boston University.
Defining Social Entrepreneurship (SE) with Field Theory
Attached is the most recent version of what you could call my “master’s thesis,” or basically what I had hoped to play with gearing up for a dissertation proposal. My goal was to inject social entrepreneurship into sociological literature and conversations as I had noticed it had thus far lacked much acknowledgement as a topic by sociology as a field. I took a culture seminar with Dr. Mike Strand, a social theorist, who introduced me to Bourdieu’s Field Theory, and tried to run with it from there. Let me know what you think and if you have any suggestions or edits – I’m still hoping to publish this or something like it someday!
Defining Social Entrepreneurship with Field Theory, Resource Dependence, and Integration
Kind of like a next step beyond defining SE with Field Theory, I tried to further explain how SE organizations innovate by applying Resource Dependence Theory and theories of Integration for an Organizational Behavior class I took with Dr. Jon Chilingerian. Attached is the PPT I used to present my theoretical work and potential research projects to test my theories.
What Makes a Social Entrepreneur? Measuring Social Entrepreneurship using the Panel Study for Entrepreneurial Dynamics II (PSED II)
Here’s yet another stab at defining and measuring social entrepreneurship, but for this project, I took a quantitative, econometric approach. For an Applied Design and Analysis course I took with Dr. Graham Wright, I took theoretical definitions of SE and sliced and diced the PSED II data using STATA to see if I could find any relationships between demographic characteristics and one’s likelihood of being a social entrepreneur.
Using Social Network Analysis (SNA) to Study the Space Race
Consider this a “for fun” project that I did for my SNA course that I took with Dr. Neha Gondal at BU to practice using this methodology. I couldn’t figure out for the life of me how to gather enough data about social entrepreneurship to conduct an SNA in time for the final paper, so I decided to run with something completely unrelated but, to me at least, still completely fun and cool. What’s cooler than space, am I right? Attached is the final paper I wrote including graphics generated from the SNA software, Pajek, that I used for this project.
Home & Garden Large Furniture Buyer User Journeys: A Diary Study with eBay
I led this research project as a Senior Design Researcher leading all Home & Garden design research at eBay in the Fall of 2021. As the lead, I collaborated with stakeholders from product, design, and business to hone in on the most important unknowns in Home & Garden across the US, DE, and UK markets and prioritize the research roadmap accordingly. This study led to the prioritization of Home & Garden as a focus category in eBay's global 2022 strategy worth over $44M in revenue. Today, while I no longer lead Home & Garden, I still consult with the team and mentor the researcher who took it over.
The Future of Higher Education Classrooms: Reimagining the Post-COVID-19 College Classroom
I led this research project as an Applied Design Research Analyst at the 3rd largest commercial interiors company in the world. In partnership with my undergraduate university, Grand Valley State University, we studied the interactions of college students and professors as they were re-entering the classroom in the Fall of 2020 given new, collaborative, in-class furniture setups. As professors and students we re-learning what activities are best facilitated in the classroom versus online, we were studying how they interacted and how they wanted to interact in their 'new normal' to help understand what college classrooms need to be in order to attract new, in-person students. This research led to the design and production of a new product, the Poppy Chair with Tablet Arm, which won an HiP Award from Interior Design at NeoCon 2022!
Who in the World is Digitalizing and Why? An Exploration of Global Digitalization and
Trust in the Technology Industry
This was a project I completed as part of a candidate assessment for Digital Planet of Tufts Fletcher School. The challenge was to clean and analyze data from the Global Findex and the Edelman Trust Barometer to explore global digitalization. To clean and analyze these data, I used Excel and Tableau.
Workforce/Economic Development and Systems Mapping & Evaluation
The following is an excerpt from a report I prepared for a project in West Michigan as a Graduate Research Assistant for which I was tasked with analyzing and mapping the ‘workforce development ecosystem of West Michigan.’ The purpose of the project was to identify gaps and overlaps in workforce and economic development services in West Michigan to provide suggestions about how to better manage and allocate funding and resources. I was primarily responsible for designing and executing the study; I led the survey design, study sampling, GIS mapping, interview design, interview conduction, interview analysis, and reporting. We cross-referenced our findings from the interviews and GIS data with nonprofits’ publicly-available 990 tax forms. The project took place over the course of the 2017-2018 school year. Identifiable data has been redacted or changed to protect client and subject confidentiality.
Healthcare and Business Model Evaluation
Following is an excerpt of a report I co-authored as an Independent Research Consultant for a healthcare nonprofit in Grand Rapids, MI. The purpose of this project was to better define the nopnprofit’s programming, market identity, and future markets to evaluate its potential for expanding. For this study, I was solely responsible for interview design, execution, and analysis as well as developing and carrying out the logic model for exploring future markets. This project took place over the Fall semester of 2017.
Education and Program Evaluation
Following is a report I produced as an Evaluation Consultant for a program through Grand Valley State University’s College of Education called Groundswell Michigan. The purpose of the program evaluation was to both explore the purpose for place-based education in Grand Rapids Public Schools as well as Groundswell’s successes and areas for improvement in implementing its program. I was the sole investigator for this project and was in charge of all aspects of the research study including study design, survey and interview design, survey and interview execution, survey and interview analysis, transcription, secondary data analysis, and reporting. This project took place over the course of the 2016-2017 school year.
