He received his Ph.D. in public policy from George Mason University. His research interests center on entrepreneurship and small business development policy, and regional economic health, performance, and development. He has been engaged in a wide variety of funded research projects with support from the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Economic Development Administration, and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He has published his work in numerous academic journals and is a current executive council member of the Southern Regional Science Association. His book coauthored with Emel Ganapati and Sukumar Ganapati and under contracted with the Edward Elgar Publishing is titled: Measuring Disaster Recovery: Bouncing Back or Reaching the Counterfactual State following Hurricane Katrina?