Natalie Novick is a sociologist and the Research Director for the European Startup Initiative, a non-profit a non-profit research group working to facilitate mutual understanding between municipalities and their startup ecosystems. She consults with governments on how to work better with their startup communities. For the last four years, she has been conducting fieldwork with entrepreneurs and community builders for the project: The Startup City: The meaning of place in Digital Europe, in support of her PhD dissertation for the University of California, San Diego.  Natalie’s research examines the spaces and places of Europe’s entrepreneurship landscape and the culture and motivations of the entrepreneurs that inhabit them. Her areas of expertise include community formation, cross-border migration, entrepreneurship and the intersection between technology and policymaking in the United States and in the EU. Natalie holds a M.Sc. in Comparative European Politics with Distinction from Trinity College Dublin, and an MA in Sociology from UC San Diego.