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The Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing has appointed its 2020-21 class of research fellows. They are:

Hilary Abell, Executive Fellow

  • Co-Founder, Project Equity
  • Research: Using ESOPs and worker co-ops to buy-out retiring business owners
  • Method: Quantitative analysis 

Maru Bautista, Executive Fellow

  • Director of Cooperative Development, Center for Family Life; President, Board of Directors, Democracy at Work Institute
  • Research: The development of gig platform worker cooperatives and franchising worker cooperatives to assist modest-income women
  • Method: Case studies

Colin Birkhead, Louis O. Kelso Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate, Sociology, Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, Duke University
  • Research: Do employee ownership plans help organizations resist the pressures of shareholder orientations and corporate short-termism?
  • Method: Quantitative analysis 

David Ciepley, Rutgers Research Fellow

  • Associate Professor, Political Science, College of Arts, Humanities, & Social Sciences, University of Denver
  • Research: Constitutional democracy and the corporation, between Republican liberty and oligarchy
  • Method: Qualitative analysis 

Adriane Clomax, Corey Rosen Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate, USC Suzanne Dworak-Peck School of Social Work, University of Southern California
  • Research: Broad-based employee ownership, the labor market, and mental health outcomes of the formerly-incarcerated
  • Method: Quantitative analysis 

Jamil Hassounah, Rutgers Research Fellow

  • Ph.D. Candidate, Management, Wilmington University
  • Research: Employee attitudes and participation in decision-making in ESOP firms 
  • Method: Qualitative and quantitative analysis

Tony Kong, Rutgers Research Fellow

  • Associate Professor, Information Systems and Decision Sciences, Muma College of Business, University of South Florida 
  • Research: Informal peer controls and employee share ownership/shared capitalism 
  • Method: Quantitative analysis

Jegoo Lee, Rutgers Research Fellow

  • Assistant Professor, Management, College of Business, University of Rhode Island 
  • Research: ESOPs and corporate responsibility
  • Method: Analysis of the MSCI ESG dataset

Benjamin Leff, Roland Attenborough Fellow

  • Professor, Washington College of Law, American University
  • Research: Universal basic income and universal capital accounts
  • Method: Legal analysis

Christopher Mackin, Ray Carey Fellow

  • Member of the Faculty, Labor and Worklife Program, Harvard Law School
  • Research: Analyzing policies on employee ownership
  • Method: Policy analysis

Christopher Michael, Joseph Cabral Distinguished Scholar and Fellow

  • Assistant Professor of Practice, Labor Studies and Employment Relations, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University
  • Research: Analyzing how the Employee Ownership Trust affects firms and their employees in the U.S. and other countries
  • Method: Qualitative and quantitative analysis

Simon Pek, Rutgers Research Fellow

  • Assistant Professor, Gustavson School of Business, University of Victoria (Canada)
  • Research: Applying deliberative democracy in employee-owned firms and platform cooperatives
  • Method: Qualitative and quantitative analysis

Adria Scharf, J. Robert Beyster Fellow

  • Project Director, Curriculum Library for Employee Ownership (CLEO), Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
  • Research: How employee ownership improves job quality for modest-income workers
  • Method: Qualitative and quantitative analysis

Tanya Brice Smith, Robert W. Edwards Fellow

  • Fellow, Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
  • Research: The role of equity ownership shares in closing the racial wealth gap
  • Method: Analysis interviews

Michael C. Sturman, Lon and Lauren McGowan Fellow in Profit Sharing

  • Professor, Human Resource Management, School of Management and Labor Relations, Rutgers University
  • Research: Employee perceptions of their profit sharing plan in the context of a more complex pay-for-performance system
  • Method: Quantitative analysis

James Terez, Corey Rosen Fellow

  • Associate Director, NJ/NY Center for Employee Ownership, Rutgers Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing
  • Research: Employee ownership as a succession plan for retiring small business owners
  • Method: Qualitative and quantitative analysis