Dr. Seungah Sarah Lee

Dr. Seungah Sarah Lee is an Assistant Professor of Entrepreneurship and Organizations at HEC Paris, Doha. Her research broadly explores how global models, scripts, and norms are 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. More recently, she has been involved in collaborative research partnerships that examine how quasi-governmental organizations broker and facilitate collaborative opportunities between startup ventures and beneficiaries for societal impact.

Additionally, she has a secondary research interest in the organization of higher education. In this line of work, she studies organizational change and the 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-Hays Fellowship, the Sheikh Saud bin Saqr Al Qasimi Foundation for Policy Research, and the Stanford Abbasi Program on Islamic Studies, and has been published in journals such as Academy of Management Perspectives, Scientific Reports, World Development, and Research in the Sociology of Organizations, in numerous book chapters, as well as in policy research reports.

She also has extensive experience working in the Middle East, the U.S., and East Asia. She has led and advised on organizational strategies, designed adaptive leadership programs, developed impact evaluation frameworks, and provided policy research and advisory services. She also served as the interim director of a corporate philanthropic foundation, overseeing foundation strategy, board governance, and grant project development.

She holds a Ph.D. in Organization Studies and International Comparative Education from Stanford University.