Career Histories PDW: session groups

AOM 2026 professional development workshop, "New Theoretical and Empirical Research Opportunities from Examining Career Histories." Updated July 16, 2026.

Session 1: opening and speaker presentations (45 minutes)

Welcome (5 minutes): James White, Nathan Barrymore, and Forrest Briscoe

Speaker presentations (10 minutes each, followed by panel Q&A): Rocio Bonet (IE Business School), Rem Koning (Harvard Business School), Seth Carnahan (Washington University in St. Louis)

Session 2: brainstorming groups (45 minutes)

Attendees choose one of three topic groups. Each group leader gives a short overview of the topic, and the group then brainstorms together for about 30 minutes.

Group leader	Topic
Josh Feng, University of Utah	Advantages and limitations of Revelio data across differing contexts
Geoff Borchhardt, University of Oregon	Careers, leadership, and inequality processes
Reuben Hurst, University of Maryland	Merging Revelio with external data, the VR Score case

Session 3: paper development roundtables (45 minutes)

Authors who submitted a proposal meet in small groups. Each paper gets about 15 minutes: a short summary from the author, then group discussion led by the table leader.

Table 1: contestation and workforce flows

Max KaganTable leader

Columbia Business School

Tae-Ung Choi

HKUST

Moralization of membership: how divestment campaigns shape employee entry, exit, and political views in the fossil fuel industry

Charles (Canquan) Li

Hong Kong Polytechnic University

Anti-SLAPP laws and employee turnover

Table 2: entrepreneurial careers and policy

Grady RainesTable leader

Cornell University

Brad Turner

MIT Sloan

Does entrepreneurship policy improve worker and regional outcomes? Evidence from a state-sponsored accelerator

Catherine Paek

Boise State University

Bridging the gap: interim employment and the performance of serial entrepreneurs

Simon Yoon

University of California, Irvine

Venture capital and talent strategy: the shift from generalists to specialists as startups scale

Table 3: gender, benefits, and advancement

Beril YalcinkayaTable leader

The Wharton School

Hillary Cookler

UCLA Anderson

Bucks for bumps: how firm-provided paid parental leave affects employee retention

Tiffany Yau

USC Marshall

Career paths to venture capital partner for men and women: a configurational analysis

Ipsu Khadka

University of South Carolina

The final drop: women's career trajectories and the path to CEO

Table 4: mobility, reputation, and strategic change

Cathy LuTable leader

University of Minnesota

Paul Ferreira

FGV EAESP, Sao Paulo

Executive reassembly and strategic distinctiveness: returnee executives and firm strategy

Henrique Goncalves

University of Notre Dame

The good employer penalty: employee reactions to layoffs at firms with pro-employee reputations

Wrap-up (15 minutes)

The organizers close the workshop with a summary of insights, collaboration opportunities, and next steps for the community.

Workshop roles

Organizers: James White (University of Maryland), Nathan Barrymore (University of Texas at Austin), and Forrest Briscoe (Cornell University).

Speakers: Rocio Bonet (IE Business School), Rem Koning (Harvard Business School), and Seth Carnahan (Washington University in St. Louis).

Brainstorming group leaders: Josh Feng, Geoff Borchhardt, and Reuben Hurst.

Roundtable leaders: Max Kagan, Grady Raines, Beril Yalcinkaya, and Cathy Lu.

Roundtable and brainstorming leaders

Max Kagan, postdoctoral researcher, Columbia Business School (Table 1)

He studies how political views shape workplaces and labor markets. His research links Revelio career histories to voter records, including the VRscores project. This connects directly to the papers at his table, which study how legal and social contestation affects employee entry and exit.

Grady Raines, Cornell University, incoming assistant professor at Indiana University Kelley (Table 2)

He studies entrepreneurship, policy, and inequality using natural experiments and field experiments. The papers at his table evaluate entrepreneurship policy and study entrepreneurial careers.

Beril Yalcinkaya, postdoctoral fellow, Wharton People Analytics (Table 3)

She studies strategic human capital, worker mobility, and how policy changes affect careers, using LinkedIn-based career data. The papers at her table study employee benefits, retention, and gender differences in career advancement.

Cathy Lu, assistant professor, University of Minnesota Carlson School (Table 4)

She studies worker mobility, firm strategy, and stakeholder relationships. The papers at her table study executive mobility and employee reactions to strategic change.

Geoff Borchhardt, assistant professor, University of Oregon (brainstorming leader)

He studies how people build careers across labor market transitions, including self-employment spells and layoffs, and how these transitions relate to inequality. He leads the brainstorming group on careers, leadership, and inequality.

Josh Feng, assistant professor, University of Utah (brainstorming leader)

He is an applied microeconomist who studies innovation and drug markets. He leads the brainstorming group on the advantages and limitations of Revelio data.

Reuben Hurst, assistant professor, University of Maryland (brainstorming leader)

He studies nonmarket strategy and political dynamics in the workforce. He leads the VRscores project, which merges Revelio profiles with voter files, and leads the brainstorming group on merging Revelio with external data.

Applicant details

All eleven applicants are listed here. Contact information is kept in the project files and is not published on this page.

Applicant	Institution and position	Research keywords	Paper summary	Stage	Table
Brad Turner	MIT Sloan, PhD candidate	startup hiring; pitch competitions; economic development	Evaluates a state-sponsored rural accelerator and pitch competition using a regression discontinuity design. Asks whether non-dilutive grants improve worker and regional outcomes. Uses Revelio and PitchBook data plus fieldwork.	Data collection	2, Raines
Paul Ferreira	FGV EAESP, assistant professor	upper echelons; executive mobility; strategic change	Argues that executives who return to a firm after time away push the firm toward more distinctive strategies. Uses a Brazilian linked employer and employee panel from 2000 to 2023.	Near-complete paper	4, Lu
Catherine Paek	Boise State University, assistant professor	entrepreneurial career; post-exit career; career transition	Argues that interim jobs between ventures explain when serial founders succeed the second time. Uses Crunchbase data on 4,055 two-time founders from 2000 to 2020.	Advanced working paper	2, Raines
Tiffany Yau	USC Marshall, PhD student	venture capital; promotion; QCA	Asks which combinations of career experiences let men and women reach venture capital partner. Uses qualitative comparative analysis on a 2011 entry cohort tracked through 2025 with Crunchbase, PitchBook, and LinkedIn data.	Preliminary results	3, Yalcinkaya
Charles (Canquan) Li	Hong Kong Polytechnic University, PhD candidate	human capital; employee turnover; stakeholder interrelationships	Finds that state anti-SLAPP laws, which limit lawsuits used to silence critics, raise employee departures by about 12 percent. Uses Revelio data on US public firms from 1990 to 2024 with a stacked difference-in-differences design.	Advanced working paper	1, Kagan
Hillary Cookler	UCLA Anderson, PhD candidate	strategic human capital; benefits; paid parental leave	Provides causal estimates of how firm-provided paid parental leave affects retention. Uses 219 hand-collected policy changes linked to Revelio histories for 5.3 million workers. Finds a 3.5 percent reduction in departures. Won the AOM 2026 STR best paper award.	Job market paper	3, Yalcinkaya
Tae-Ung Choi	HKUST, assistant professor	social movements; employee and insider activism; stigmatization	Argues that sustained moral campaigns make industry employment a visible moral position. Finds that divestment campaigns raised fossil fuel turnover 15 percent, cut entry from divesting universities 24 percent, and shifted remaining employees' political donations. Uses Revelio and donation data.	Advanced working paper	1, Kagan
Kate Niu	INSEAD, PhD candidate	corporate political activity; activism; competitive dynamics	She has not yet submitted a proposal document. The organizers have contacted her to request one.	Pending	Unassigned until her proposal arrives
Henrique Goncalves	University of Notre Dame, PhD candidate	strategic change; technological disruption; stakeholder outcomes	Argues that firms with pro-employee reputations face stronger backlash from remaining employees after AI-related layoffs. Uses layoff events at S&P 1500 firms from 2022 to 2025 linked to Revelio data.	Early stage	4, Lu
Simon Yoon	University of California, Irvine, PhD candidate	entrepreneurship; strategic human capital; venture capital; generalists and specialists	Argues that as startups progress through venture capital rounds they hire more specialists, moderated by the number of management levels. Uses Revelio, Crunchbase, and PitchBook data on more than 600,000 US startups from 2005 to 2023.	Dissertation proposal	2, Raines
Ipsu Khadka	University of South Carolina, PhD student	women's career trajectories; CEO succession; corporate governance; gender inequality	Asks what distinguishes women who reach the CEO position from those who stop at a feeder role, and whether the difference reflects constraint or choice. Two phases: interviews with women near the top, then tests of trajectory features on career-history data.	Early stage	3, Yalcinkaya

How papers were matched to tables

Each paper was matched to the leader whose own research is closest to it. Tables were kept to two or three papers each, following the workshop format.

Table 1 pairs two papers on how legal and social pressure affects employee flows with Max Kagan, who links career histories to political records in his own work.
Table 2 pairs three papers on entrepreneurial careers and entrepreneurship policy with Grady Raines, who studies entrepreneurship policy with similar research designs.
Table 3 pairs three papers on gender, benefits, and career advancement with Beril Yalcinkaya, who studies careers and inequality with LinkedIn-based data.
Table 4 pairs two papers on executive mobility and employee reactions to strategic change with Cathy Lu, who studies worker mobility and firm strategy.

Matching used the submitted proposals and survey keywords. CVs were optional in the survey and were not required for matching.

Status notes

Kate Niu will be assigned to a table when her proposal arrives. Table 1 is the likely fit based on her keywords.
The default plan is three brainstorming groups. If Forrest Briscoe confirms his participation, a fourth group on turnover and mobility can be added.