Golub Capital Social Impact Lab at Kellogg

Dr. Rishabh’s expertise is in quantitative marketing. His primary research focuses on how nonprofits can leverage marketing instruments to increase donations. He also examines how social media influencers’ disclosure of sponsorships influences follower engagement.

Dr. Rishabh started a nonprofit in India to support opportunity asymmetry in rural areas and ran it successfully for 5+ years before coming to the U.S. He has worked closely with one of India’s largest donation platforms as a consultant, while conducting research on the effects of social influence on donor behavior. In particular, he examines how displaying size of donor base of charities may affect charitable giving.

Dr. Rishabh applies econometrics, causal inference and machine learning to analyze structured and unstructured secondary data. He also conducts randomized control trials in the field to assess effectiveness of firm strategies and uncover drivers of consumer decision making. Prior to entering academia, Dr. Rishabh worked as a Business Analyst for Deloitte US-India, and a Quantitative Analyst for a US bank in Dallas.

Dr. Rishabh received his Ph.D. in Business Administration (Quantitative Marketing) from the Indian School of Business, his Bachelor of Technology from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India

Dr. Song’s expertise is in relational economic sociology and cultural industries. Her primary research focuses on how economic actors such as social media influencers use audience interactions as relational work to gain and maintain audience support. In other research, she examines how such relational work shapes racial inequality and affects call-outs and cancellations of cultural products. Her previous work showed how relational work is used to achieve better outcomes in care work policies and personal data management.

Dr. Song uses mixed quantitative and qualitative methods, incorporating observational data analysis, computational text analysis, qualitative content analysis, semi-structured interviews, and surveys in her work.

Dr. Song has volunteered for multiple non-profit organizations, including Apex For Youth, the Bank Street Family Center, and World Vision Korea. She also worked with Samsung’s North American Headquarters on corporate social responsibility research. During graduate school, she mentored prospective doctoral students and taught MBA courses such as Cross-Cultural Seminar and Global Business Track.

Dr. Song received her Ph.D. in Management and M.A. in Quantitative Methods in the Social Sciences from Columbia University. She received her A.B. in Sociology from Princeton University.

Dr. Tien’s expertise lies at the intersection of organizations, culture, and political economy. Her early research examined the role of cultural and religious ethics in shaping business management practices, and her later research focuses on how new ventures—tech startups—at the nexus between the West and China navigate fundraising, regulatory uncertainty, and build organizational identity. Her most recent projects examine social impact entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship in the context of inner-city and rural America, with a focus on racial minority and women small business owners and entrepreneurs. 

Dr. Tien employs mixed methods in her research, using a combination of ethnography, interviews, and archival and survey data. She has conducted fieldwork across cities in the U.S. and China since 2012 and has worked in a range of entrepreneurial and investment contexts, in addition to freelance consulting for early stage startup founders. In recent years during the pandemic, she was on the founding team for a sustainability startup. 

At the end of her doctoral program, Dr. Tien created and taught an entrepreneurship course with Princeton University’s Keller Center for Entrepreneurship. Outside of research, Dr. Tien spent much of her time mentoring high school, undergraduate, and younger graduate students from underrepresented backgrounds. 

Dr. Tien received her Ph.D in Sociology from Princeton University. Prior to graduate school, she studied Political Science and Economics at Wellesley College and taught in northwest Baltimore through the Teach For America program.

Dr. Zhao’s expertise is in diversity and inclusion. His earlier work examines cultural assimilation and name Anglicization of immigrants. His micro-affiliation theory posits that daily and commonplace behaviors at work can have broad implications on employees’ feelings of belonging. His empirical approach includes field and lab experiments, interventions, longitudinal studies, and archival research.

Dr. Zhao’s research has been funded by the U.S.’s National Science Foundation, Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and China’s National Science Foundation; and his findings have been spotlighted by NPR, The Atlantic, and the BBC.

As a first-generation college student and a Chinese man living in North America, Dr. Zhao’s minority identities have given him a unique perspective on the challenges posed by social inequality and afforded him a passion for exploring issues of prejudice, discrimination, diversity, and assimilation.

Dr. Zhao has worked with several non-profit municipal agencies, including the Peel Career Assessment Service and the Peel Institute on Violence Prevention in Toronto, to tackle urgent humanitarian issues involving Afghan refugee women—identified by the agencies as the most vulnerable population. He has helped launch online EMBA leadership and team courses by providing content and technical support to EMBA students. He has worked with both ethnic majority and minority students in his research labs. Dr. Zhao has mentored students from Asia, as well as Latinx American, African American, Asian American, LGBTQ+ students, and students with disabilities.

Dr. Zhao received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the University of Kansas, and was the Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto, prior to joining Kellogg.