My name is Sienna Helena Parker. I am a Ph.D. Candidate in Technology Management at UC Santa Barbara's College of Engineering.

My research examines how emerging technologies create new opportunities for employment and work across the life course. In my dissertation, I focus on later-life careers, developing a conceptual framework that reframes retirement not as an endpoint but as an orientation, shaping how workers interpret and perform paid labor beyond what has traditionally been seen as the end of a career. Empirically, through the case of older workers retiring from full-time employment and transitioning to platform-mediated online freelancing, I am exploring how they navigate shifting identities, ratings-based reputational systems, and conditions of precarity in the gig economy. As a researcher, I am committed to rethinking how work and careers are structured to support sustainable pathways for an aging workforce.

I received my BS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern's School of Education and Social Policy in 2018. After graduation, I spent three years working in Silicon Valley, including working in customer success at LinkedIn and product and customer operations at a housing technology start-up called Villa Homes.