Minors: Psychology + Art

Design and teach engaging and interactive semester long courses for undergraduate, MBA, and international students.

Utilize instructional design methodologies for live, virtual, and asynchronous course delivery.

Taught courses in Piacenza, Italy; Adelaide, Australia; Leeds, UK; and Raleigh, North Carolina, USA.

MIE 310: Introduction to Entrepreneurship
MBA 572: Venture Opportunity Analysis
MBA 570: Opportunity Evaluation and Value Creation
M380: Doing Business Globally

Worked with our client UNICEF to develop and run experiments based on behavioral science principles and human-centered design.

Managed the relationship with our clients at UNICEF.

Led workshops with senior stakeholders to uncover the root cause of their challenges and determine where our team should focus.

Developed a detailed project plan to monitor and track progress.

Created, conducted, and analyzed surveys and interviews.

Prepared and presented workshops on behavior change to internal and external partners (e.g. UNICEF country offices, conferences).

Wrote grants and brought in $40,000+ dollars for research focused on mental health, workplace well-being, & female led startups. PI on grant from Aspen Institute that focused on start-ups in Latin America.

Designed experiments, led data collection, and conducted analysis using SPSS and R.

Wrote technical reports and research papers that were published in peer-reviewed business journals.

Presented research at conferences and to non-technical audiences.

Co-developed and taught the curriculum for this 12-week program, focused on accelerating B2B technology companies.

Led the selection process to choose participating startups.

Managed the relationships with stakeholders, which included executive team members from Red Hat, Citrix and Becton Dickinson.

Coached 8-10 startup teams in weekly one-on-one meetings to help them achieve program goals.

Emceed final pitch event three years in a row. Crowd of 300+ community members, investors, and business leaders.

Founding team member that launched HQ Raleigh and oversaw its growth to 4 locations, with 600+ members.

Hosted local leaders for round table conversations, reached out to policy makers to push for legislation that supported small businesses, and recruited resources to support startups.

Supported the planning and design of three 15,000+ square foot buildings to emphasize collaboration and community building.

Hired and managed a team of 10 people.

Led HQ Raleigh through the B Corps Certification process.

Led the design and execution of experiential learning programs for undergraduate students from around the world.

This position was funded through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

Worked with 60 unemployed adults to help them reskill and prepare for work in the green jobs industry.

Designed and delivered a career readiness program for 100+ youth.

Took time to interview staff and understand gaps in the career readiness program. Based on those outcomes I developed the first career fair at the CCC with companies from across California.

The number of companies that offer mental health benefits increased after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is limited research examining the impact of benefit usage on employees in the workplace. I conducted an experiment to investigate the effects of benefit usage and the impact of social norms on an employee's work evaluation. A total of 523 individuals with supervisory experience participated in the study. This research indicated that companies should consider gender bias and people's prejudice of mental health when implementing mental health benefits.

These findings were presented to the consulting firm Slalom, Boston's I/O Psychology group, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology's annual conference in 2023.

Employees have multiple competing roles, including their role as an organizational citizen. This study used design thinking practices and rigorous scientific methodology. I worked with UNICEF to assess if randomly assigning employees (N = 347) to have their identity as an organizational citizen primed would increase their intentions to use a new Internal Behaviour tool/website. Findings supported that priming personnel significantly increased usage intentions.

From October of 2020 until December of 2021, I worked with a team at Duke University’s Center for Advanced Hindsight (CAH) and UNICEF’s Pakistan Country Office to identify ways that Behavioural Insights (BI) could be used to support the important work the UNICEF team is doing in-country. Through numerous conversations, dozens of readings, and several brainstorming sessions, we narrowed in on an important practice called Challenge Mapping. Using BI theory and methodologies, this project set out to test a goal setting intervention.

Goal setting has been shown to be an effective strategy for motivating work performance across a wide range of countries and contexts. Targeted goal setting combined with BI interventions has proven to improve performance by reducing stress and increasing employee engagement. However, goal setting had never been tested in the context of fighting polio in Pakistan. This initiative provided a rigorous test of its effectiveness in the Pakistani context.

From August 2020 to December 2021, I worked with a team at Duke University’s Center for Advanced Hindsight (CAH) and UNICEF’s Pakistan Country Office to identify ways that Behavioral Insights (BI) could be used to encourage Facebook users in Pakistan to sign a pledge and show their support for polio eradication. Through rigorous research and conversations with local partners, CAH and UNICEF hypothesized that a BI intervention in social media messaging could increase engagement in media content advocating for polio vaccine uptake in Pakistan.

I worked with a team at North Carolina State University to complete this project on behalf of the Andrew's Startup Accelerator. I interviewed entrepreneurs during the summer of 2020, with the goal of developing insights that could assist in the ongoing professional development of ventures selected for the Andrews Startup Accelerator. We focused on one main research question: “What do founders need in order to scale an effective team.”

A group of business and university professionals that educate and create growth funnels for aspiring B Corps.

Regional Internet of Things (RIOT) is an accelerator program focused on early stage IOT based companies. It is based in the Triangle with a focus on a national scale.

Selected by the state department to work with 50 female entrepreneurs in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

Developed and facilitated a two-week workshop that helped a local organization solve a problem and taught the design thinking process to the attendees. Worked with local leaders to recruit participants and incorporate local companies into the curriculum.

Selected by the state department to oversee 12 high school sophomores in a two week exchange program in Serbia and Hungary.

Attended workshops focused on building cultural bridges and enhancing youth leadership skills to solve community problems.

Led post programatic discussions with the students on a daily basis.

Worked with the adult mentors from Serbia, Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia to coordinate cross cultural conversations between the students.

I discovered opportunities for growth related to being more innovative and using human-centered design thinking; hearing from Liz and Cristina and others in the course expanded my perspective. - City of Raleigh workshop participant

I didn't want this to end; I hope there are more opportunities for these cohorts in the future. - City of Raleigh workshop participant

I was amazed with how well Liz taught this course. I heard that she was not a typical professor and was brought on due to her experience in the entrepreneurial world. She has been one of the best professors I have had. She provided quick and meaningful feedback on all assignments. She always had a plan and ensured the lessons were taught with meaning and purpose. - MIE 310 Student (Summer 2022)

I suspect that behind every great organization there is someone like Liz. She's a great example of someone who can get a lot accomplished by being extremely good with people. I've met very few people who radiate more warmth and can maintain a positive, relaxed attitude when there is a ton going on. Liz seems to always have the big picture in mind her presence was so critical to the success of inaugural accelerator program. - Startup Founder

If you have the chance to work with Liz, take it. She has a magical ability to make everyone feel like the most important person in the room while simultaneously leading a team forward.

Liz might not have known this at the time, but a good 50% of my notepad scribbling during our meetings wasn't documenting to-do lists or plans of action, I was taking notes dissecting how Liz led. Her leadership ability is something I would like to emulate one day. - HQ Raleigh Employee