Research
My research examines how organizations, workers, and families respond to changing policy and institutional environments. I am particularly interested in how resources, organizational characteristics, and institutional constraints shape adaptation, decision-making, workforce dynamics, and service delivery. I pursue these questions primarily in early care and education and related human service settings, where organizations respond to public policies, resource conditions, and the demands of providing essential social services.
My Dissertation: Organizations, Policy & Adaptation
My dissertation examines how private early childhood education providers respond to changes in their policy and institutional environments. I examine how ECE providers respond when public policies change the conditions under which they operate. My research considers how policies such as preschool expansion and workforce investments shape provider decision-making, stability, and participation in publicly funded programs.
Using mixed methods and longitudinal administrative data, I examine both organizational decision-making and provider stability. This work draws on organizational and economic perspectives to understand why ECE providers facing similar environmental changes may follow different trajectories of adaptation and survival.
My current job market paper, “Supporting Provider Stability: Smart Start Workforce Grants and the ECE Market in Chicago,” examines whether participation in Illinois Smart Start Workforce Grants is associated with greater stability among private, licensed ECE providers. The study combines longitudinal licensing data with program participation records to examine provider trajectories and patterns of market exit.
Workforce & Service Delivery
A second line of my research examines how organizational and institutional environments shape the experiences and decisions of workers in human service settings. In ongoing work, I examine how organizational work environments, including stress, wages, and workplace conditions, shape ECE workers’ intentions to leave their jobs. More broadly, I am interested in how organizations structure work and how workforce conditions affect organizational stability and the delivery of essential services. This work connects organizational questions about work, retention, and adaptation with policy questions about workforce development and service delivery.
Families, Markets & Access
My earlier and ongoing research examines how families navigate constrained service environments and make decisions about care and educational opportunities.
In related work, I examine how mothers navigate childcare choices when affordability, availability, safety, convenience, information, and social networks constrain the options available to them. This research highlights how individual decision-making is shaped by the structure of service markets and the institutional environments in which families make choices (manuscript under review).
Methods
I use quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods approaches to study these questions. My methodological training includes econometrics, longitudinal and quasi-experimental methods, administrative data analysis, qualitative research, and data visualization.