Paige Clayton is an Assistant Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. She is also affiliated with the CREATE Economic Development Research Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Dr. Clayton joined Georgia Tech in 2020 after completing her Ph.D. in Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a concentration on entrepreneurship and innovation, regional economic development, and science and technology policy. At the University of North Carolina, Dr. Clayton received the Nancy W. Stegman Fellowship and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship. During her PhD, she held visiting positions at SKEMA Business School (Sophia Antipolis, France) and at UCLA’s Department of Geography. 

Dr. Clayton’s research focuses on regional patterns of economic development and how entrepreneurship and innovation influence local economies. Key themes include entrepreneurial support organizations, social network analysis, entrepreneurial ecosystems, university technology transfer, research & development, and institutions, and the connections between these factors which help support local entrepreneurship and innovation. Her research has been published in Research Policy, Industrial & Corporate Change, Academy of Management Perspectives, the Journal of Technology Transfer, Industrial Labor & Relations Review, International Regional Science Review, and the Oxford Handbook on Entrepreneurship and Collaboration, among others. 

Paige is an alumna of Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy and a native Atlantan.