Social Equity Research Lab

Dr. Clara Fangfang Ma

Research Fellow and Coordinator

Dr. Clara Ma, founder and CEO at Inception Education, spearheads partnerships with corporate HR consultancies and educational institutions worldwide.
A bicultural, bilingual, and entrepreneurial leader, Clara earned her doctorate in Education, with a concentration in Entrepreneurial Leadership, from Johns Hopkins University. She advocates for social justice and the implementation of social-emotional learning principles.
Dr. Ma also shares insights she’s gained from years spent working in the industry by teaching business courses at Johns Hopkins University's Carey Business School.

Dr. Shelby Forbes

Senior Research Fellow

Currently a teaching professor within the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, Dr. Shelby Forbes has been teaching interpersonal, organizational, and health communication courses at the university level for over 15 years. Her published works predominantly focus on health communication and health organizations, with a special focus on disability issues and mental health (especially as it pertains to the international student population). Her work has paid attention to historically marginalized voices and populations within medicine, the impact of organizational dynamics and localized communicative chains on the delivery of care, and how large-scale discourses of health influence and are simultaneously reinforced in interactions between healthcare professionals and their patients.

Dr. Lance Cheng

Senior Research Fellow

Lance is an Assistant Professor in International Business at the University of Liverpool Management School (ULMS). His research interests primarily lie in the realms of International Business (IB) and Human Capital Strategy. Specifically, he is passionate about understanding how firms modify their human capital composition in response to cross-border labor movement. Additionally, his work contributes to understanding how firms adjust their global sourcing strategies to confront emerging grand challenges in the global business environment, such as the polarization of political ideologies, the rise of geopolitical tensions, and sustainable development mandates across different countries. Prior to joining the ULMS, Yuxi completed his Ph.D. in International Business from the School of Business at George Washington University.

Dr. Genevive Bjorn

Senior Research Fellow

Genevive Bjorn is an education researcher at Rutgers University Education and Employment Research Center, focusing on graduate and workforce development using mixed methods research methods. Current projects are investigating how postsecondary institutions use labor market information and how quality is defined in noncredit education. Before education research, Genevive taught secondary chemistry at Eastlake High School in Chula Vista, CA. She received an NSF Noyce teaching fellowship in 2013 and won a national teaching award in 2017 from the National Association of Science Teachers. She was also a science journalist and regular contributor to Nature Medicine, and her work has appeared in Nature, Science, The New York Times, and many others. She also received a Knight journalism fellowship in 2011. She has authored and co-authored dozens of publications. Currently, she teaches scientific writing in the COMET program at the University of Bern in Switzerland and consults on critical reading and thinking skill development.
Genevive holds a doctorate in education from Johns Hopkins University and an M.Ed. from the University of California San Diego. She also holds an M.S. in biomedical sciences from the University of Hawaii, and B.A. in biology and chemistry from Boston University. A complete list of publications are available at ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2856-1067.