Dr. Lei ZHAI is an associate professor in the Department of Administrative Management at Zhou Enlai School of Government, and deputy director of the Education Center for Public Administration (MPA) in NanKai University, China. She is also the Vice President of China Young Crew (CYC).

Her research interests include government organization, project management and collaborative governance. She is PI for two national level projects of China, includes National Natural Science Foundation project and National Social Science Fund project. She is also the PI of several other projects, such as Tianjin Social Science Fund project, Postdoctoral Science Foundation project of China, Tianjin Science and Technology Development Strategy project. As the core member of research team, she awarded IPMA Research Award Winner 2009 by International Project Management Association (IPMA).

Lei has published her book “The Organization Model and Operating Mechanism of the Service-oriented Local Government” in 2017, and published more than 30 articles. She has worked with a wide range of local governments and provided advises to solve their problems. She has worked as visiting scholar in the University of Glasgow, and participated in International Visitor Leadership Programme of the US.