People
Meet the minds behind Penn State WORKs Consulting!
Our team of Ph.D.’s in training and faculty members with decades of experience brings together a wealth of knowledge, expertise, and innovative thinking to drive positive change in organizations.
With a shared passion for understanding complex people challenges in organizations and a relentless pursuit of solutions, each member of our team is dedicated to crafting tailored strategies that propel our clients towards success.
Get to know the faces behind our transformative projects – the organizational scientists ready to make a meaningful impact on your organization.
Faculty Members
James LeBreton, Ph.D.
Professor
For the last 20 years, he has focused on developing, testing, and revising the Conditional Reasoning Theory of Personality. This theory is anchored on the basic concept of motivated reasoning. As part of this research program, he has been involved in the development and validation of several measures designed to assess the implicit motives to aggress, to achieve, and for power. He has then relied on these measures to test hypotheses linking personality to organizational outcomes including counterproductive work behavior, leadership, team processes & performance, and job attitudes.
He also has secondary interests related to research methods and statistics. He is a past editor of Organizational Research Methods and recently co-edited the APA Handbook on Multilevel Theory, Measurement, and Analysis. His current interests include topics related to meta-analysis, multilevel research, and the development and validation of surveys/tests used in organizational research.
Susan Simkins, Ph.D.
Professor
Investigating the drivers of effective teamwork and performance is the central focus of herresearch program. Given the preponderance of team-based structures in work settings, teams are currently one of the most actively researched areas in Industrial/Organizational psychology. Secondary lines of research focus on leadership and decision making. These areas of study intersect in that they emphasize the role of individual differences, cognition, and temporality as dominant themes.
Her research follows three streams: team composition/diversity, team cognition/mental models, and the integration of time in team and leadership research.
Greg Edward Loviscky, Ph.D.
Teaching Professor
Greg Loviscky has been involved with the I-O Practicum since 1991 as an undergraduate student. That experience of applying psychology in the workplace propelled his entire career of over 30 years of addressing selection and leadership development challenges in both public and private sectors as an external consultant. After earning his Master’s degree at Old Dominion University, Greg returned to Penn State to complete his Ph.D., participating in the I-O Practicum as a graduate student. After working as a consulting project director for four years, he returned to Penn State to join the Department of Psychology as a member of the teaching faculty. In 2008, he and Rick Jacobs created the Schreyer Honors College – Leadership Development Center (SHC-LDC), which provides students with a two-week immersive leadership development experience (https://shc-ldc.weebly.com). Greg continues to direct the SHC-LDC to this day. After 20 years of teaching undergraduate students, Greg is now the Director of the Master of Professional Studies (MPS) program in Psychology of Leadership for Penn State’s World Campus (https://www.worldcampus.psu.edu/degrees-and-certificates/penn-state-online-psychology-of-leadership-masters-degree), as well as a faculty supervisor in the I-O Practicum course.
Graduate Students
Johanna Stockdale
Ph.D. in training
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Didar Zeytun
Ph.D. in training
Didar Zeytun is a second-year graduate student working with Dr. Alicia Grandey. Previously, she has worked at multinational companies for five years and then back to graduate school in 2018 where she received her master’s degree in IO psychology from Koç University, Turkey in 2021. During her master’s studies, she managed Leadership Lab for three years where she mainly investigated the dyadic relationship between leaders and subordinates while leading and assisting number of research-oriented consultancy projects. Didar is interested in recovery, emotion regulation, stress and health behavior at work, and their health implication with a primary focus on women. Besides her academic pursuit, she enjoys exercising, playing with her dog and cat, and exploring the world of food.
Tayana Rich
Ph.D. in training
She is a second-year graduate student working with Dr. Alicia Grandey. Her research interest involves how leaders maintain and encourage diversity, with my thesis examining how senior leader composition may change individual perceptions of diversity initiatives. I also have broad interests in machine learning and algorithmic fairness. I look forward to the opportunity to apply concepts I’ve learned in my courses to enact positive change in organizations through practicum projects.
Madison Lenz
Ph.D. in training
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Chelsea Basore
Ph.D. in training
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Destiny Hemsey
Ph.D. in training
Destiny Hemsey is from Ewing, NJ! She received her bachelor’s degree in psychology and minor in HR management from The College of New Jersey in May 2022. Her research interests broadly include individual differences and employee motivation. In August 2022, Destiny began working with Dr. Haylee Min looking at employees’ perceptions of turnover stigma and with Dr. Rustin Meyer studying both valid and diverse personnel selection systems. In her free time, Destinyenjoys playing with her cats, reading, and cooking fun, new recipes.
Tianyi Zhang
Ph.D. in training
She is a third-year graduate student in this department, currently working with Dr. Susan Simkins. Her research focuses on examining the temporal Person-supervisor fit. Alongside this primary focus, she is also developing a growing interest in research methods and big data. She iseager to engage in practical projects that allow her to translate her research passion into real-life changes.