Past Projects
Teaching Fellow, Harvard Kennedy School Executive Education
Coached leadership development and strategy for community-based leaders across three continents in the Leadership for Organizing and Action course with legendary community organizer and election strategist Marshall Ganz. Participants in the one semester course led campaigns to promote democracy and justice in a variety of fields including local and national elections, women’s rights, DC statehood, climate justice, and more.
One of Marilyn’s greatest strengths was her ability to create a space that felt both deeply supportive and intellectually engaging. She facilitated with warmth, grace, empathy, and humor, while also building strong relationships across a very diverse group of participants. On a personal level, I found her incredibly encouraging in my own leadership development. She consistently challenged me in thoughtful ways and was able to push me just enough to help me reflect more deeply and grow with confidence.
- Harvard Kennedy Executive Education student, 2026
If I had to summarize what this course has done to me, I think it helped me understand leadership less as individual capacity and more as relational responsibility. It deepened my understanding of power, participation, trust, and collective action, while also giving me language for values and experiences that had already quietly shaped my life and work for a long time.
- Harvard Kennedy Executive Education student, 2026
Subject Matter Expert & Coach, Equity Diversity & Inclusion
Partnered with the 800-person IT organization powering UCLA Health to build a workplace where leaders, managers, and individual contributors recognize (and expand!) their own capacity for working in diverse teams and practicing equity.
This work began in 2020 with supporting C-Suite leaders to partner with the founding members of the Black Advocacy Workgroup (BAW) to shape organizational culture. Shifting culture to make a diverse organization more inclusive and equitable requires real commitment from the top. Leaders committed to equity examine their organization’s data to find where the inequities are, they create systems for navigating the tensions inherent in diversity, and they develop people and project managers to to lead with their values.
Over five years, I partnered with leaders at UCLA Health IT (UHIT) to equip leaders, managers, and individual contributors with essential skills, vocabulary, and mindsets for leading equitably. In addition to small-group coaching and retreat design, I facilitated on-going learning spaces for all staff and for managers, created a suite of tools including an EDI Guide, a bi-weekly newsletter column on current events and health care issues, and consulted on strategic plans.
Building Liberatory Consciousness in Brooklyn’s Community School District 13
An on-going project since 2019, I support District 13’s work to build an equitable school district where every child is seen and supported. The district calls in families and educators to participate in monthly learning experiences to raise consciousness of anti-racist education practices. We foster staff’s reflection and praxis through the year-long Equity Fellows Experience. We enable students to express their visions of equitable and liberatory schools by cultivating their their natural leadership abilities.