MY RESEARCH
Teams, Belonging, and Resilience
My PhD focused on a question that has guided my work ever since: what turns a group of individuals into a real team?
My research sits at the intersection of psychology, leadership, and relationships. I study what helps people and teams stay resilient, connected, and able to do meaningful work in the midst of uncertainty and change.
I was especially interested in how people can develop a strong personal voice while also experiencing a deep sense of belonging — and how this balance shapes resilience, motivation, and performance over time.
The findings challenge a common assumption: that belonging comes at the expense of individuality. Across multiple studies, the research shows the opposite. When people feel securely connected to their team, they are more able to express themselves authentically, act independently, and engage more fully in their work.
In practice, this balance allows team members to be passionate and unguarded in their discussions, challenge one another’s thinking, openly admit mistakes and weaknesses, recognize one another’s distinctive strengths, and build trust and commitment around shared results.
Drawing on attachment theory, my doctoral research examined the quality of individuals’ relational bonds with their teams and how these bonds shape both personal experience and group dynamics. Secure attachment at the group level was associated with higher motivation, stronger personal and collective resilience, and better individual and team performance.
Together, these findings position the relationship between individuals and their teams as a central engine of resilience, innovation and performance.
What This Research Means for Leaders
Belonging enables voice.
In times of rapid change and disruption, people don’t contribute less of themselves when they belong — they contribute more. Secure connection enables curiosity, independent thinking, and the courage to speak up.
Resilience is relational.
Resilience is not only an individual capacity; it is built between people. Teams become resilient through the quality of their relationships — how they hold tension, navigate difference, and stay connected under pressure.
Relationships amplify intelligence — human and artificial.
As AI reshapes how work is done, leadership is about creating conditions where human judgment, learning, and technology can work together. Trust and connection are not “soft” skills — they are enabling acts that allow collective intelligence to emerge.
Trauma, Growth, and Entrepreneurship
My most recent research explores the connection between trauma and entrepreneurship, examining how entrepreneurial action can become a pathway for post-traumatic growth. Based on a mixed-methods study with entrepreneurs who experienced trauma following the events of October 7, the research shows that entrepreneurship is a way of reorganizing life alongside pain.
The findings reveal that growth does not replace suffering, but unfolds alongside it. Participants showed high levels of post-traumatic growth together with ongoing distress, reinforcing the idea that meaningful change often emerges through struggle.
Entrepreneurial activity functioned as a lived form of resilience — expressed through action, responsibility, and commitment — rather than as a narrative of coping. The study highlights how meaning-making, agency, emotional regulation, and deep relational support enable individuals to transform disruption into purposeful action, allowing vitality, contribution, and future orientation to re-emerge after profound disruption.
In this sense, the study reflects the deeper story of Israel as a startup nation — not innovation despite adversity, but innovation shaped through it.
What this means for leaders and founders
Growth does not require the absence of pain.
Meaningful action can emerge alongside distress.
Resilience is enacted, not narrated.
In this research, resilience appeared primarily through doing — taking responsibility, building initiatives, and committing to impact.
Entrepreneurship can be a relational pathway to growth.
It is not only about building companies or solving problems. It can also help people rebuild meaning, reconnect with others, and move forward while still acknowledging what happened.