Seungah Sarah LEE

Seungah Sarah Lee received her PhD in Organization Studies and International Comparative Education from Stanford University. 

Her research broadly explores how global models, scripts, and norms become transmitted and adapted to influence organizational forms, practices, and change. She is particularly interested in how nation-states and organizations negotiate the changing demands of a globalized world and adapt models for sustainable development to foster (social) entrepreneurship and innovation in their local contexts. She also has a secondary interest in the organization of higher education. In this line of work, she studies organizational change and expanding actorhood of higher education institutions in response to globalization, social movements, and changing labor market demands from global, comparative perspectives.

Her work has been funded by the Fulbright-Hayes Fellowship, Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, and the Stanford Abbasi Program on Islamic Studies and published in journals such as World Development, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Scientific Reports, in numerous book chapters, as well as policy research reports. She was nominated for the Academy of Management's William H. Newman Award and was a runner-up for the OB Division's Best Paper Award with Entrepreneurial Implications. 

Prior to joining HEC Paris, Seungah was a Visiting Senior Lecturer at New York University Abu Dhabi. Prior to academia, she led organizational strategy and design for newly established education nonprofits and provided policy research and advisory services. She also worked as the interim director of a corporate philanthropic foundation, overseeing foundation strategy, board governance, and development of grant projects. She now serves the foundation as a Board Member.