Grace is a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University’s Golub Capital Social Impact Lab. She completed her PhD in sociology at Princeton University on an accelerated track, graduating early with the university dean’s fellowship.

Much of Grace’s research lies at the intersection of the economy and culture. Understanding the various social forces that shape economic development and economic life, whether in a global comparative context or in the context of impoverished urban and rural communities, is a common theme in her scholarship. The theoretical interests that motivate her work are often highlighted in the empirical contexts of entrepreneurs and/or organizations.

Grace began her research journey studying entrepreneurs in a global comparative context and is now studying entrepreneurship in America’s most economically distressed communities. Her earliest work examined the impact of cultural and religious ethics on entrepreneurs’ business management practices in China. Grace’s dissertation examined the growing ecosystem of tech startups and venture capital operating in transnational contexts, and how early-stage firms and entrepreneurial actors must navigate transnational as well as locale-specific challenges, such as regulatory constraints, under an autocratic government. Her most recent, long-term project draws on the framework of racial capitalism to analyze the dynamics of local economic development and revitalization, via social entrepreneurship, in poor urban and rural communities. This project is motivated by the larger question of, how do we build wealth in our poorest communities?

Grace employs mixed methods in her research, using a combination of ethnography, interview, archival and survey data. She has conducted fieldwork across cities in the U.S. and internationally since 2012. Between 2017 and 2021, Grace has worked in a number of entrepreneurial and investment-related contexts in addition to freelance consulting on the side for early-stage startup founders across a range of industries.

Grace’s research has been supported by the Kauffman Foundation, the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton’s Center on Contemporary China, Princeton’s Center for the Study of Religion, and Princeton’s Center for the Study of Social Organizations, among others. Her work has been recognized and awarded by the American Sociological Association.

Prior to her time at Princeton, Grace studied politics and economics at Wellesley College and taught in northwest Baltimore through the Teach For America program. Outside of her professional experience in the tech sector, she has also worked at various government agencies in the pre-academic part of her life, like the U.S. Congress, the U.S. Department of Justice, and for the New Jersey Attorney General.