Assistant Professor, Department of Organizational Behavior, School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, USA.

Brian Rubineau studies how subtle and informal social dynamics contribute to inequalities in occupations and the labor market. He earned his Ph.D. from MIT's Sloan School of Management, concentrating in economic sociology and organization studies, and earned a Masters in Public Health from Harvard University. He has served as a Graduate Fellow at the Institute for Quantitative Social Sciences at Harvard University, and a Resident Fellow at the Institute for Social Sciences at Cornell University. In 2014, Professor Rubineau will be joining the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University.  

Professor Rubineau discussed his research on the effects of peers and professional socialization interactions on gender differences in engineering and STEM career choices, and present organizational strategies to overcome these dynamics. His research shows that students’ self-confidence in their fit with engineering careers is a key predictor of persistence, one that overshadows both objective performance and family plans. Professional socialization and peer interactions contribute to gender differences in the successful cultivation of this confidence.