Shelby Gai

Shelby Gai is an Assistant Professor of Management at Michigan State University. Her research focuses on board design - a subfield of organizational design that emphasizes how to design a company's board of directors to align with the organization's strategic goals. 

She has published in journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Management Studies, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Industrial and Corporate Change. Her work has received awards like the 2018 Andreas Al-Laham Best Paper Award from the Multi-Level Network Research Standing Working Group at the European Group for Organizational Studies (EGOS), the 2019 and 2025 Best Paper Proceedings from the Strategy Division of the Academy of Management, and has been nominated for Best Paper awards for the 2025 STR Division, 2025 SMS Annual Conference, and 2026 ICGS Annual Conference. 

In addition to her research, she is an award-winning teacher and has won a teaching award every year that she has taught. She has received several "Instructor of Excellence" awards, which recognizes the top 10% of Broad professors, at both the undergraduate and EMBA levels. She has also received the "Faculty of Excellence Award" twice in a row for teaching the core strategy courses in the Executive MBA Program. She was also recognized as one of Poets and Quant's Top 50 Best Undergraduate Business Professors in 2022. 

Shelby graduated with an M.A. and Ph.D. in Management and Organizations from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management. She also has an M.S. in Statistics from Northwestern as well as a M.A. from the Wharton School, where she researched changes in Hong Kong's board independence regulations using an institutional lens. Shelby graduated magna cum laude from Princeton University with an A.B. in Sociology and a certificate in East Asian Studies. During college, she researched topics related to race and ethnicity.

Before entering academia, Shelby worked in the Financial Services and Board Services Practices at the executive search firm Spencer Stuart in both their New York and Shanghai offices. As the Junior Knowledge Manager in the Board Services Practice, she spearheaded research efforts that culminated in the first Hong Kong Board Index.