Class of 2011

I learned that Danny Kim had become a professor at Wharton and was working on some interesting research about immigrants, so I reached out to him to see how he was doing! He wrote in, “Hi, ’11s! Sending in a quick update here: After finishing my Ph.D. (six years—brutal), my wife, Grace, and I recently moved from Boston to Philly for my first academic job as an assistant professor at the Wharton School at University of Pennsylvania. It’s been a lot of fun researching and teaching entrepreneurship. As an example, my colleagues and I recently put out a study showing that immigrants in the United States create more jobs than they take. Using confidential, population-level data from the federal government, we find that immigrants are much more likely to start new companies than natives, and the resulting job creation from these immigrant-founded startups far exceeds the number of jobs that immigrants take in the labor market—ultimately creating a positive ripple-effect on the economy. Of course, let me know if you’re ever in the Philly area when we’re back to our new normal!”

Speaking of entrepreneurship generally, our classmate Sam McIntire, along with his cofounder Matt Davis, has opened a food business, Mosaic Foods, that makes plant-centric frozen meals and delivers to the northeastern United States.

Hope you are all staying safe and warm during these cold months! As always, please reach out to me with classmate updates (or if you’d like to write a guest column!).

—Hillary S. Cheng, 26611 La Roda, Mission Viejo, CA 92691; (603) 546-8452; hillary.s.cheng@dartmouth.edu