Background
Felicia is a Behavioral Science PhD candidate at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business with a focus on organizational behavior. In her dissertation, she uses NLP (natural language processing) and experimental methods to examine how conversational receptiveness — linguistic signals that indicate openness to opposing viewpoints — shapes organizational outcomes. She also studies workplace culture as a financial asset and the integration of human–AI workflows into organizational systems.
Her work sits at the intersection of organizational behavior, communications, system design, and implementation science. She investigates structured interventions that drive behavior change, support process adoption, and produce measurable performance improvement at scale.
Before Booth, Felicia built her career in corporate communications and management consulting. She rose to Executive Vice President at Edelman and served as a senior advisor to Fortune 500 C-suite leaders. She founded Edelman’s Behavioral Science capability within the Business Transformation practice and applied choice architecture and implementation science to rebuild enterprise workflows during large-scale change initiatives. She translated strategic objectives into executable behavior specifications that drove adoption of new processes and organizational norms.
Felicia has worked across technology, healthcare, biopharma, and financial services. She previously served as an adjunct professor at Syracuse University’s S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications and now teaches MBA courses on strategy and organizational culture at Chicago Booth.
Research Interests
Felicia’s research interests include organizational communications and culture, human-AI operations, and quality of life. One of her primary research objectives is to develop a generalizable measure of quality of life so it can be quantified, compared, and reshaped across communities and contexts through technology, policy, and practical interventions.
Awards
(2026) Hillel Einhorn Research Award
(2025) Best of Conference - Science Category, 7th Annual Transcending Boundaries Research Symposium
(2024) Nike PhD Research Fellowship, Workplace Intelligence
Selected Publications & Presentations
(2026) Society for Personality and Social Psychology Conference, Chicago, IL - When Interests Collide: Organizational Implications of Perceived Cooperation and Competition
(2025) International Association for Conflict Management, Burlington, VT - Does Conversational Receptiveness Increase Positivity for Organizations Addressing Controversial Issues?
(2025) Public Relations Society of America, Impact25, New York, NY - Meaningful Employee Engagement: Fostering connection and affinity among your most important ambassadors
(2025) UChicago GRAD 7th Annual Transcending Boundaries Research Symposium - From Data to Dialogue: Where Science Meets Storytelling
(2024) Joy, F. & Grotto, E., I Don't Just Work Here: The New Purpose of Workplace Culture, Matt Holt Books/Simon & Schuster
(2022) Becker Friedman Institute for Economics, Discrimination in the 21st Century Conference - Effects of Discrimination on Economic Growth panel