Evelyn Zhang

I am an Assistant Professor at Frankfurt School of Finance and Management since 2021. My research focuses on career mobility, social networks, and strategic human resource management. I believe that we could achieve a better understanding of how career dynamics influence the outcomes of individuals, groups, and organizations by uncovering the micro foundations: How individuals connect, communicate, and learn in organizations.

I am currently working on several projects investigating how employees can effectively navigate changes in careers, gender differences, and how organizations can help them. I ask questions such as how does job mobility—the changes between job positions—influence individuals’ social networks? Why do these changes subsequently influence the working groups and organizations to which the individuals belong? And how could individuals and organizations actively construct valuable social structures? To answer these questions, I conduct longitudinal studies involving field observations, surveys, and analyses of unique datasets with longitudinal HR records, object monthly performance, and meta email communications.

I obtained my doctoral degree in Organizational Behavior and Theory from the Tepper School of Business, Carnegie Mellon University. Before CMU, I obtained my bachelor's and master's degrees in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University, China. I also received a bachelor degree in Economics from Tsinghua University, China. During my time at Tsinghua, I spent two fun years interning in Beijing, first with the device group at Ericsson, then with the technical sales group at IBM. These internship experience had led me to appreciate the role that social networks play in organizations. This appreciation eventually led to my pursuit of Organizational Behavior and Theory.