2025-26 Research Fellows

The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing has appointed its 2025-26 class of 35 research fellows. Listed alphabetically, they are:

Yifat Aran, Nachson and Arieh Mimran to.org Fellow

• Assistant Professor of Business Law, University of Haifa (Israel)
• Studying employee share ownership and equity compensation in high-growth companies using a dataset encompassing 1.2 billion job postings from 3.6 million employers

Laura Beltran-Figueroa, Employee Ownership Foundation/Louis O. Kelso Fellow and Applied Research Lab Fellow

• Research Associate, Rutgers Center for Women and Work
• Analyzing how ESOPs influence the marriage premium, the divorce penalty, and the motherhood penalty, which are drivers of the gender wage gap

Ethan Bernstein, Bill and Connie Nobles Fellow

• Edward W. Conrad Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
• Investigating how decentralized workplace structures affect employees’ attention distribution and the subsequent impact on organizational performance

Vanessa Bransburg, Executive Fellow

• Co-Executive Director, Democracy at Work Institute
• Studying the impact of worker cooperatives on immigrant members and how they affect worker-owners’ sense of agency and emotional health

Lorin Busaan, Institute Fellow

• Ph.D. Candidate, Management, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria (Canada)
• Studying the evolution of employee ownership trusts in Canada and how return and control rights for employees enhance a firm’s capacity to implement strategies

Alexander Busch, J. Robert Beyster Fellow

• Ph.D. Candidate, Management, MIT
• Using U.S. Census data to research how company policies change after converting to an ESOP

Fiona Chen, J. Robert Beyster Fellow

• Ph.D. Candidate, Economics, Harvard Business School
• Using U.S. Census data to research how company policies change after converting to an ESOP

Christine Curella, Executive Fellow

• Co-Founder, Hive Ownership
• Exploring how employee ownership strengthens businesses and creating guidance for business support organizations on the value of employee ownership and Team Trusts

Erik Forman, Applied Research Lab Fellow

• Ph.D., Cultural Anthropology, City University of New York
• Turning his dissertation into a book to be titled, “Killer App: Uber, Worker Ownership, and the Future of Capitalism”

Bill Fotsch, Executive Fellow

• Founder, Economic Engagement
• Using surveys to create an Employee Engagement Index to improve business results and the lives of the employees who drive those results

Ellen Frank-Miller, Executive Fellow

• Founder and CEO, Workforce & Organizational Research Center
• Studying peer-reviewed literature and creating an evidence-based conceptual model for businesses seeking to create an ownership culture

Joseph Fridman, Executive Fellow

• JD Candidate, School of Law, City University of New York
• Studying a worker-owned company’s experiments with caring and governance, internal communications for policy rollouts, and operationalizing ownership principles

Lisa Gomez, Executive Fellow

• Former Assistant Secretary of Labor
• Analyzing national employee ownership issues after her service as Assistant Secretary of the Employee Benefits Security Administration within the U.S. Department of Labor

Eric Hoyt, Employee Ownership Foundation/Louis O. Kelso Fellow

• Assistant Professor of Economics, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Rhode Island
• Using U.S. Census data to study how ESOPs affect productivity and employment stability

Oyindamola A. Ijewere, Nachson and Arieh Mimran to.org Fellow

• Ph.D., Business Administration, Wilmington University
• Investigating the role of employee ownership in confronting the succession planning crisis that faces Nigeria’s small and medium-sized enterprises

Matthew Johnson, Pete Stavros Fellow

• Assistant Professor of Economics, Sanford School of Public Policy, Duke University
• Identifying the characteristics, frictions, and other considerations that make the largest “marginal difference” in whether a firm would consider an ESOP transition

Fidan Ana Kurtulus, Pete Stavros Fellow

• Professor of Economics, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, University of Massachusetts Amherst
• Studying how management and organizational practices affect the relationship between employee equity ownership and productivity

Nathan Lazarus, J. Robert Beyster Fellow

• Ph.D. Candidate, Economics, MIT
• Using U.S. Census data to research how company policies change after converting to an ESOP

Christopher Mackin, Abby Rockefeller Fellow

• Faculty Member, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School
• Examining international perspectives on employee ownership adoption outside the U.S.

Julian McKinley, Executive Fellow

• Co-Executive Director, Democracy at Work Institute
• Bolstering data systems within cooperative development organizations and worker cooperatives to improve standards, compare strategies, and meet investors’ needs

Atul Mitra, Faculty Fellow and Mentor

• Nationwide Mutual Insurance Company Professor and Chair of the Management Department, David W. Wilson College of Business, University of Northern Iowa
• Conducting management research on employee share ownership

Ben Miyamoto, Executive Fellow

• Manager, Evidence Project, The Pew Charitable Trusts
• Helping to develop evidence-informed best practices to improve collaboration among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners in the employee ownership space

Thomas Muirhead, Executive Fellow

• Co-Founder, Hive Ownership
• Exploring whether a plug-and-play model would increase employee ownership adoption and investigating what it would take to make Team Trusts a widely accepted standard

Erik Olsen, Employee Ownership Foundation/Louis O. Kelso Fellow

• Professor of Economics, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Missouri-Kansas City
• Translating technical empirical studies of employee ownership for use by business leaders

Pankaj Patel, Joseph Cabral Distinguished Scholar and Fellow

• Frank J. and Jane E. Ryan Family Chair in Strategy and Innovation, Villanova School of Business
• Studying how performance feedback influenced publicly traded U.S. firms that adopted an ESOP between 2014 and 2024

Simon Pek, Corey Rosen Fellow

• Associate Professor of Business and Society, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria (Canada)
• Studying the evolution of employee ownership trusts in Canada and how return and control rights for employees enhance a firm’s capacity to implement strategies

Chantal Pezold, J. Robert Beyster Fellow

• Ph.D. Candidate, Economics, MIT
• Using U.S. Census data to research how company policies change after converting to an ESOP

Jamie Pockrandt, Executive Fellow

• Data Architect, Democracy at Work Institute
• Strengthening collaboration with researchers to deepen the analysis of data, validate and build upon past work, and shape the development of meaningful metrics

Ethan Rouen, Pete Stavros Fellow

• Terrie F. and Bradley M. Bloom Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
• Conducting a field experiment to determine how communications to employee-owners can strengthen a culture of ownership

Rik Sen, Ford Foundation Fellow

• Associate Professor of Finance, Terry College of Business, University of Georgia
• Studying firm-level decisions, individual behavior, and the role of exogenous tax and liquidity changes in relation to employee stock purchase plans

Darryl Shoemaker, Executive Fellow

• Former Chief Talent Development Officer, HDR
• Examining career development, strategic planning, and employee ownership cultures in employee-owned companies

Jason Spicer, W.K. Kellogg Foundation Fellow

• Associate Professor of Sociology, Marxe School of Public and International Affairs, Baruch College
• Investigating how socioeconomic community characteristics and local government policies shaped variations in employee ownership adoption over the last 15 years

Steve Storkan, Executive Fellow

• Executive Director, Employee Ownership Expansion Network (EOX)
• Conducting research on ESOPs

Huanan Xu, Faculty Fellow and Mentor

• Associate Professor of Economics, Judd Leighton School of Business and Economics, Indiana University at South Bend
• Studying the economics of employee share ownership

Rodrigo Zuloaga, Executive Fellow

• Founder, Centro de Capital Incluyente (Mexico)
• Disseminating video interviews, developing education games as training tools, and connecting companies to the employee ownership ecosystem in Latin America