Hi! Nice to ‘meet’ you. Here’s some about me, and I look forward to getting to know you if you choose to connect…

Growing up mixed class and a dual citizen — between Toronto, a rural town outside Buffalo, and Baltimore — led me to an early understanding that there are many ways people move through and make sense of the world. I was raised by a single mother who is an educator, artist, and activist, and by a mostly absent father. My known paternal family is small. My maternal family sprawls.

As a young adult the identity that mattered the most to me was being a poet, and I spent nearly a decade living and writing in Canada and the UK. Over the last two decades of working predominantly in and with low- and moderate- income, Black, and Brown communities in the UK and United States, I’ve also developed a keen critical analysis of power, privilege, and systems of oppression. This includes learning about and interrogating how these show up in my own intersecting and evolving identities and lived experiences as a white, now upper-middle class, queer, neurodivergent woman who has been the target of gender-based violence, and who has lived with a largely invisible disability and sexuality.

My perspective is deeply informed by my experiences of moving between countries, cultures, and geographies, and the processes of building (and rebuilding) community all that movement steeped me in. It’s shaped by my experiences of racial, economic, and cis privilege, economic precarity, gender-based violence, and trauma, and the fires these lit in me. And it reflects my experiences of the erasures of “passing”, to which I credit my sensitivity for things implicit, unspoken, and unseen.

I think the universe picked this lifetime to teach me about complexity and living beyond binaries. At the moment, I’m doing this learning from Beacon, New York, where I live with my partner and kiddo.

On a more “professional” note…

Over the past two decades I have collaborated on learning, organizational change, systems change, and anti-oppression work as a community member, teaching artist, program manager, C-suite leader, board member, evaluator, and consultant.

Through my work with Create Knowledge, and in prior roles with Algorhythm and Vantage Evaluation, I’ve facilitated local, statewide, regional, and national learning and change work with community organizers, nonprofits, foundations, coalitions, and capacity-builders. This work has focused on issues including racial justice, community arts, educational equity, social and emotional learning, food justice, people-friendly streets, criminal-legal reform, the relationship between health and housing justice, and peer-led mental health and substance use recovery. And it has involved working both with organizations structured along traditional leadership hierarchies and with those aspiring to “flatter” models like Teal and Sociocracy. Not unsurprisingly, power, power-sharing, autonomy, and consent — and how to navigate these things with authenticity and care within our relationships, organizations, and the larger systems that shape our lives — have been constant themes.

Prior to consulting, I spent nine years working in asset-based youth development and community arts at the nonprofit Free Arts NYC, lastly as Chief Program Officer. There I co-led internal organizational and JEDI-focused change — and built long-term relationships with young people, families, and staff at schools, community centers, social service agencies, and non-secure detention centers in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens.

Finally, I started my career at the consultancy General Public Agency in London (UK), which supported public realm strategies in the sectors of culture, heritage, development, community, and urban planning. And I credit much of my facilitation skillset to the 6 years I spent early on collaborating with young people and adults as a poet and teaching artist in the UK and the US (check out www.orium.org).

Certifications & Training

Professional Coach Training (Co-Active Training Institute)
Intercultural Development Inventory® Qualified Administrator
Intercultural Conflict Style Inventory® Certified Administrator

Education

Graduate Certificate in Leading Equity and Inclusion in Organizations (Northwestern University)
Graduate Certificate in Teaching to Inspire Learning (Royal Holloway, University of London)
MPhil in Architecture and the Moving Image (University of Cambridge)
BA in Art History and English Literature (McGill University)

*My learning energies are now focused on abolition; queer history and theory; neurodiversity/neurodivergence, disability history, and crip theory; generative conflict and transformative justice; and how to hold space for joy in social justice activism.

Affiliations

International Coaching Federation Member, NYC Charter Chapter (2024 - present)
Teaching Artists Guild Board of Directors, President (2021 - present)
Emergent Learning Community Project Community of Practice, Member (2021 - present)
¡Milwaukee Evaluation! Member (2021 - present)
American Evaluation Association Member (2018 - 2024)
Colorado Evaluation Network Member (2019 - 2024)
Teaching Artists Guild National Advisory Committee, Co-Chair (2015 - 2021)
NYC Arts In Education Roundtable Board of Directors, Member (2015 - 2017)
University Settlement: Cornerstone Campos Plaza Advisory Board, Recording Secretary (2014 - 2016)

And if you believe in any of this stuff☺…

• Myers Briggs: INFJ/P

• CliftonStrengths: Input • Individualization • Strategic • Achiever • Learner

• Intercultural Conflict Style: Discussion/Engagement

• Astrology: ☀= Cancer  / ☽ = Sagittarius  / Asc = Sagittarius