She completed her undergraduate studies at the Wharton School of Business at the University of Pennsylvania and wrote her PhD in organizational psychology at Leiden University in the Netherlands. Her research interests focus on power and conflict in teams, including the different forms of power structures and hierarchies that may exist in teams and the conflict dynamics that take place when team hierarchies shift and evolve. Her research has appeared in journal such as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, and Science. She is currently an associate editor at the journal Small Group Research and on the editorial boards at the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Search Quarterly, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.