About Me

I am an Assistant Professor in the strategy area and Chazen Senior Scholar at Columbia Business School and a Senior Fellow at the Microsoft AI Economy Institute. My research explores the global startup scaling gap, examining why promising startups emerge around the world while successful scaling remains concentrated in a small number of places. In particular, it assesses how local environments can push startups toward suboptimal strategic paths, from the markets they target to the technologies they adopt, and make those paths harder to change once pursued.  My work draws inspiration from my prior policy experience as a senior consultant and staff economist at the World Bank and White House and startup experience as a co-founder, adviser, and board member. I earned my BA at Yale University, MPhil at the University of Cambridge, and PhD at Harvard Business School. I was born in Kyiv and grew up outside of Philadelphia.