Youth Development
Youth Engagement Innovation Fund
School & Main Institute
Coaching and Technical Assistance
2024 - Present
Technical assistance and hands-on coaching for grantees of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Youth Engagement Innovation Fund. I support grantees to plan and implement innovative projects to increase youth engagement and leadership within their organizations.
Pathways for Girls
The American City Coalition
Consultant
2019
A Youth Participatory Action Research Project in Roxbury, MA, this project sought to understand opportunities and challenges of young women in Nubian Square, and to identify strategies to support their upward mobility. Pathways for Girls was a mixed methods, youth-led research project. We trained 6 young women as researchers and engaged 160 young women through surveys and focus groups. The project and its resulting report spurred action among several youth serving organizations to collaborate around girls empowerment.
Services: Participatory Action Research
Making Youth Voices Heard
Emmanuel Gospel Center
Consultant
2018
A Youth Participatory Action Research project to address rising violence in the Lower Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. This project equipped 11 youth to design and implement a research project to understand opinions and experiences of residents related to education, poverty, drugs, violence, and employment in their community. Youth researchers developed a set of recommended solutions, which they presented to the broader community. After being trained in the YPAR approach, this group continued their research the following year.
Services: Participatory Action Research
Program Design
Boston Project Ministries
Consultant
2017 - present
Career-readiness Curriculum: A six-week career-readiness curriculum, combining interactive activities and skill-building workshops to improve employability outcomes for summer youth employees. Implemented each summer for many years following its debut, this curriculum addressed workplace success, professional development, job-readiness, and career exploration.
Brotherhood & Sisterhood Programs: A leadership development and pre-employment summer program for middle school youth. I developed curricula, implementation plans, and tools to measure desired outcomes related to leadership and job-readiness.
Services: Strategic Planning & Program Design
Youth Hub Boston
Founder and Director
2014 - 2017
A neighborhood-based initiative supporting, equipping, and empowering youth as changemakers. Launched out of a community planning process with a vision to dramatically improve youth employment outcomes, Youth Hub applied youth participatory action research methods to understand complex issues related to youth success and to co-create solutions. Youth Hub engaged over 600 youth through youth-led research, career-readiness cohorts, workshops, job fairs, and more. As a result of this work, I was awarded a Neighborhood Hero award from ABCD, and was invited to speak at the 2015 URBAN Research-Based Action Network National Convention.
Youth Hub sparked many more organizations to apply participatory action research methods to empower youth and residents as leaders.
Services: Participatory Action Research, Strategic Planning & Program Design
Civic Engagement & Resident Leadership
People’s Collaborative Governance Network
Engagement Lab & Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
Co-founder and Lead Project Manager
2020-2022
Established in collaboration with the Engagement Lab at Emerson College, and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the People’s Collaborative Governance Network was a multi-sector and multi-disciplinary network of residents, elected and government staff and officials, nonprofit leaders, artists, students, and academic researchers, applying co-design methods and collaborative governance structures to center community experience in the exploration and development of novel solutions to pressing issues during the COVID-19 pandemic. It resulted in several meaningful projects to address digital access and equity, food insecurity, equitable engagement, and more. Several of these projects have evolved and persisted within partner organizations.
Services: Facilitation & Experience Design
Just Engagement
People’s Collaborative Governance Network & Boston Planning and Development Agency
Co-designer
2021
Just Engagement is the final deliverable of a 6-month collaborative design project. Facilitated through the People’s Collaborative Governance Network, in partnership with the Boston Planning and Development Agency (BPDA), the Engagement Lab at Emerson College, and community members in Dorchester and East Boston, this project uncovered community priorities and strategies for institutions to implement more equitable community engagement practices.
Services: Equitable Community Engagement
Boston Civic Leaders Summit
Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell
Co-founder and Lead Organizer
2019
Co-founded and sponsored by 2019 Boston City Council President Andrea Campbell, the Boston Civic Leaders Summit was a full day summit aimed at connecting and empowering resident leaders as changemakers. Attended by over 350 people, including residents from every neighborhood of Boston, the summit included a keynote address by Congresswoman Ayanna Pressley, an interactive plenary session with Antionette Carroll about centering racial equity, and over a dozen workshops on leadership, organizing, civic action, collaboration, and self-care.
Services: Facilitation & Experience Design
D4 Civic Empowerment Series
Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell
Designer and Facilitator
2018-2019
Co-designed with residents of Dorchester, Mattapan, Jamaica Plain, and Roslindale, and sponsored by City Councilor Andrea Campbell, the D4 Civic Empowerment Series is a six-part workshop to equip residents to successfully lead, grow, and sustain civic and community groups in their neighborhoods.
Services: Coaching, Training & Capacity Building
Strategic Engagement Plan
Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell
Consultant
2017-2018
Working closely with the Councilor’s staff team and key stakeholders, I utilized the public participation spectrum to define strategies to grow and deepen resident engagement. Beyond the strategic plan, I also assisted the team with defining and tracking metrics for progress, and with developing pathways for involving residents in policy work.
Services: Strategic Planning & Program Design
Community Violence Intervention
Transforming Narratives of Gun Violence
Engagement Lab
Co-founder and Lead Project Manager
2022 - Present
Transforming Narratives of Gun Violence (TNGV) is a collaborative initiative which seeks to disrupt harmful narratives about gun violence and co-create art and media interventions to uplift community-based solutions for peace and justice. Through TNGV, students, faculty, artists, and media-makers work alongside communities most impacted by violence using collaborative methods of design and storytelling. TNGV has created over a dozen art and media artifacts.
Services: Facilitation & Experience Design, Strategic Planning & Program Design
Violence Intervention & Prevention
Boston Project Ministries
Consultant
2025 - Present
I am working with Boston Project Ministries to develop a logic model to guide their implementation as a new City of Boston Violence Intervention and Prevention (VIP) grant recipient. The program aims to strengthen communities’ ability to prevent violence using community engagement and action.
Services: Strategic Planning & Program Design
Making Youth Voices Heard
Emmanuel Gospel Center
Consultant
2018
A Youth Participatory Action Research project to address rising violence in the Lower Roxbury neighborhood of Boston. This project equipped 11 youth to design and implement a research project to understand opinions and experiences of residents related to education, poverty, drugs, violence, and employment in their community. Youth researchers developed a set of recommended solutions, which they presented to the broader community. After being trained in the YPAR approach, this group continued their research the following year.
Services: Participatory Action Research
Youth Hub Boston
Founder and Director
2014 - 2017
A neighborhood-based initiative supporting, equipping, and empowering youth as changemakers. Launched out of a community planning process with a vision to dramatically improve youth employment outcomes, Youth Hub applied youth participatory action research methods to understand complex issues related to youth success and to co-create solutions. Youth Hub engaged over 600 youth through youth-led research, career-readiness cohorts, workshops, job fairs, and more. As a result of this work, I was awarded a Neighborhood Hero award from ABCD, and was invited to speak at the 2015 URBAN Research-Based Action Network National Convention.
Youth Hub sparked many more organizations to apply participatory action research methods to empower youth and residents as leaders.
Services: Participatory Action Research, Strategic Planning & Program Design
Environmental Justice
MVP 2.0 Planning Grant
Municipal Vulnerability Preparedness Program, Executive Office of Energy and Environmental Affairs, Commonwealth of Massachusetts
Equity Partner
2025 - Present
I provide coaching and training for Massachusetts’ municipal recipients of the MVP 2.0 Planning grant to equitability engage environmental justice communities and other priority populations to identify critical strategies for advancing social and climate resilience.
Services: Coaching, Training & Capacity Building, Equitable Community Engagement
Transforming Narratives for Environmental Justice
Engagement Lab
Co-founder and Lead Project Manager
2023 - 2024
Transforming Narratives for Environmental Justice (TNEJ) launched at Emerson College in 2023 to advance environmental and climate justice through collaborative storytelling, design, and research. Through community-university partnerships, TNEJ produced several impactful co-creation projects and has since re-launched at Boston University Center on Media Innovation and Social Impact to continue the work that was started.
Services: Equitable Community Engagement, Facilitation & Experience Design, Strategic Planning & Program Design
Higher Education
Center for Media Innovation and Social Impact
Boston University
Consultant
2025 - present
With a grant from the Mellon Foundation, the newly launched Center for Media Innovation and Social Impacted contracted me to design a new fellowship program for community-based advocates, artists, and visionaries to explore storytelling as a mechanism for advancing environmental justice. The Environmental Justice Community Impact Fellowship attracted nearly 40 applicants for its inaugural year and kicks off with 7 fellows in Fall 2025.
Services: Strategic Planning & Program Design
Engagement Lab
Emerson College
Associate Director
2021 - 2024
I oversaw operations and staff management, while facilitating two social impact initiatives addressing gun violence and environmental injustice through collaborative storytelling, research, and design. I cultivated deep community partnerships and facilitated community leadership in curricular and research projects. I worked with faculty, students, and partners to uphold the integrity of our collaborative creation model within and beyond the classroom.
Services: Coaching, Training & Technical Assistance, Multi-Sector Collaboration, Strategic Planning & Program Design
Graduate School of Social Work
Boston College
Adjunct Faculty
2017, 2023
Courses:
Community Engagement for Social Change
Foundations of Macro Practice