Welcome!

I'm Elaine, a PhD candidate in Management at the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. I am on the 2026-2027 academic job market.

I study strategy, entrepreneurship, and corporate governance. My research examines how corporate owners (private equity, venture capital, hedge funds) influence firm strategy, performance, new venture growth, and innovation.

In my Job Market Paper, I find that private equity owners redeploy talent across their portfolio firms to implement their distinct strategy ("playbook"). This relational approach is most common among owners who emphasize strategic growth rather than financial engineering or cost control.

My research is forthcoming at Organization Science and Management Science. It has received the AOM Gleuck Best Paper Award and the SMS Responsible Research Prize, and was a finalist for the SMS Best PhD Paper Award.

I received my BA in public policy studies from Duke University and MS in industrial engineering from Seoul National University. Before entering academia, I was a consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton in Washington, DC.