I am currently the lead faculty in the PACE Nonprofit Administration Certificate program at Evergreen State College and teach courses in nonprofit management, public policy, and public administration. My research centers on critical theory of the nonprofit sector and explores the impacts of neoliberalization on the foundational values and practices of the nonprofits, and how these logics extend into larger civil society. My most recent publication on this topic is "Toward a care-centered approach for nonprofit management in a neoliberal era." I am also interested in how civic identity is shaped within institutions, both nonprofits and higher education, with an emphasis on the impacts of service and community based learning on the engendering of undergraduate civic identities. This is examined in my recent book chapter in the "Sustainable Solutions: Let Knowledge Serve the City." I have served in the nonprofit sector in various capacities and my background in gender studies and political anthropology provides a deeply interdisciplinary perspective useful for examining the nonprofit sector and the social justice issues it often aims to resolve from a critical lens.
Fields of Specialization: Higher Education, Nonprofit Theory, Critical Theory, Role of Civil Society, Third Sector Research, Civic and Community Engagement, Citizenship Studies, Community Development, Feminist Theory, Diversity Education, Community Leadership, Community-Based and Service Learning, Social Sustainability, Collective Impact, Critical Pedagogies
Education
PhD, Portland State University, Public affairs and Policy, 2021; MPA, The Evergreen State College, 2011; BA, University of Florida, Women's Studies and Anthropology, 2009
Teaching Style
As an educator, I see myself as a servant leader, a direct participant in learning alongside my students, and one who continually strives to embody an engaged pedagogy. For me, the key to education in nonprofit and public administration leadership is to ensure that learning activities extend far beyond the walls of the classroom. By promoting a public service ethic and utilizing on-the-ground community-based learning strategies my students become embedded within the context of their learning. These community embedded experiences provide an opportunity for students to acquire, practice, and apply subject matter while simultaneously developing the skills, knowledge, and attributes of citizenship. In other words, to identify, navigate and act from their reflective connections between theory and practice. By putting students in positions where they grapple with complex community problems in the real world in real time, they become better suited to articulate their own personal philosophies of the common good, as well as become better equipped to take the path of lifelong, engaged citizenship and leadership. I bring a strong diversity and social justice lens to my instruction, drawing on my interdisciplinary background in women’s studies, anthropology, critical theory, nonprofit management and public administration and largely emphasize power dynamics as they affect internal and external organizational environments, and society at large. Further, my own academic research on nonprofits, citizenship, and democratic capacity building provides an innovative and unique approach to bear on the methodological and theoretical concerns in public administration which I bring to the classroom.