Vivian L. Xiao, Ph.D.

Vivian’s work sits at the intersection of the two major shifts changing the modern organization: the rapidly increasing racial diversity in the workforce and the proliferation of remote work. Her work explores these topics at multiple levels of analysis, investigating how people from a diverse set of backgrounds navigate success at work, and how organizations dynamically respond to these major shifts in their environment through their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices. Using archival, experimental, and survey methods, both in the lab and in the field, she focuses primarily on three areas of inquiry: (1) how people’s race and gender often jointly impact leader evaluation and selection, (2) how the changing nature of the workforce and increased prevalence of remote work affects workers’ experiences and outcomes, and (3) how organizations themselves respond to their environments and engage in practices that help or hinder inequality. Her work highlights the multi-faceted and multi-level nature of bias, discrimination, and worker wellbeing, and lays the foundation for more comprehensive and effective strategies to improve DEI in organizations.