My Research

I am an assistant professor at Rutgers University - Newark in the School of Public Affairs and Administration. The core of my work studies paid and unpaid (volunteer) labor in the public and nonprofit sectors. I am particularly interested in how and why individuals engage in these sectors; I answer these questions through quantitative, macro-level analyses of publicly available data. Within my research, I focus on the implications of this behavior on market outcomes and its subsequent meaning for practitioners.

This primary interest is reflected in my current body of work. My research can be split into three separate but interrelated topics: wage differences, civic engagement patterns, and sociodemographic variations that arise between workers in public, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors. The photo above displays work from “From Service to Sector” in which I find a strong relationship between early-adulthood civic engagement and emerging-career employment in the nonprofit sector. This echoes a consistent finding across many of my papers in which I conclude that individuals engaging with the public and nonprofit sector are idiosyncratic entities that necessitate nuanced methodology. My results call for tailored recruitment strategies that bolster nonprofit and government human capital.