About
I partner with leaders and organizations to strengthen alignment and cultivate environments where people and mission can thrive.
Inquiry & Discernment
I listen and look to understand what people are experiencing, how formal structures are intended to work, what is happening in practice, and where the tensions and possibilities lie.
From there I look for patterns across purpose, people, structure, resources, expectations, and culture. I draw on evidence and judgment together, working collaboratively to make sense of complexity, identify priorities, and shape responses that are thoughtful, practical, and aligned with purpose.
Stewardship & Legacy
I understand leadership and organizational work through the lens of stewardship. We inherit organizations, programs, resources, and relationships; shape them for a time; and eventually pass them forward.
That creates a responsibility to do more than manage what exists — to leave people, systems, and institutions stronger, clearer, and better able to fulfill their purposes.
Scholarship & Engagement
For more than two decades I have studied questions of human development, leadership, organizational culture, learning, purpose, and belonging — and engaged those same questions inside complex organizations.
Research illuminates patterns and challenges assumptions. Working inside organizations reveals how ideas hold up amid history, relationships, competing priorities, and limited resources. I am most interested in what becomes possible when scholarship and organizational experience inform one another — and in translating ideas into frameworks, tools, learning resources, visual communications, and other usable forms that help people understand, decide, and act.
Experience & Perspective
My career spans administrative leadership, academic research, program development, strategic assessment, and organizational change across higher education and K-12 education.
That experience has reinforced something I see across sectors: organizations may differ in purpose and structure, but many wrestle with similar questions of alignment, trust, resources, culture, and change. I bring that perspective to work with universities, schools, nonprofits, foundations, businesses, and other organizations.
Teaching, Research & Program Development
My teaching and research have spanned philanthropy and civic engagement, leadership and organizational change, student development, faculty work and professional life, learning and pedagogy, research design, and institutional life.
My work has also included designing, developing, and leading major research, and educational initiatives that have attracted more than $7 million in foundation and donor investment. Related writing and presentations include books, peer-reviewed articles, research and evaluation reports, invited addresses, and conference presentations focused on human development, organizational change, educational design and assessment, meaning and purpose, and higher education.
Creative Practice
Alpine Wool Arts is a parallel exploration of making, material, place, and care. Working by hand offers another way of thinking about design, patience, stewardship, and the environments we create for one another — values that also inform how I approach organizations and the people who inhabit them.