Aliya Hamid Rao is an Assistant Professor at the London School of Economics. She completed her PhD in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania and a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University. Her research interests span the study of work and organizations, family, gender, economic sociology, and emotions. Her first book, Crunch Time: How Married Couples Confront Unemployment, provides a detailed examination of how professionals in the US contend with unemployment. Her research has been published in peer-reviewed journals and publications such as the Financial Times, the New York Times and Harvard Business Review.

We talk with Aliya about how her own career unfolded and the lessons she learned along the way, what drew her towards her research on gender, family, and their influence on the workplace and individual careers, her advice for early career professionals, why she wrote Crunch Time and the main ideas of her book, her practical advice for women who have gaps in their careers and are seeking to be rehired, examples of good Diversity & Inclusion practices by organizations, and her most exciting projects for the future.

Links from the episode: 

• Aliya’s personal homepage
• Aliya’s book : Crunch Time: How Married Couples Confront Unemployment
• Aliya’s LinkedIn profile
• Book mentioned by Aliya: “Getting to Diversity: What Works and What Doesn’t” by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev  

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