Thank you for visiting my website. I’m Olivia, a PhD candidate at UC San Diego’s Rady School of Management. I study how individuals regulate their own and others' emotions in the workplace. These skills are essential for performance, creative thinking, effective leadership, resolving conflict, and building high-quality connections in organizations. I use a multi-method approach including interventions, physiological measures, repeated-measures field studies, behavioral coding, and real-time continuous assessment during conversations.

Papers Published & Under Review:

Compassion Responding at Work. Compassion in response to others’ distress is essential for positive organizational culture and high-quality workplace relationships, yet individuals often struggle to express it when encountering others’ needs or problems. My research shows that the emotion regulation strategies people use in these moments shift their attention inward or outward, which in turn shapes both their actual compassion and how compassionate they are perceived to be.

Regulating Stress to Improve Creativity. Stress disrupts cognitive functions that are critical for creativity, raising the question: can effective stress regulation strategies actually enhance creative thinking? In my work, I examine positive reappraisal and show that it improves creativity not just by changing emotion, but by strengthening cognitive processes like persistence and flexibility in both field and lab settings.

Managing Others’ Emotions. Emotions are ubiquitous in the workplace. They shape behavior, influence thinking, and affect well-being, and yet we know surprisingly little about how people can effectively change others’ emotions. My research shows that actively reappraising others’ experiences, rather than simply listening, is one of the most effective strategies: it improves others’ emotional states, increases perceived compassion, and even reduces the regulator’s own stress, revealing both interpersonal and personal benefits.