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 School 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 School Executive Education student, 2026
Subject Matter Expert & Coach, Equity Diversity & Inclusion, UCLA Health Information Technology
Throughout five years of engagement, I partnered with leaders at UCLA Health IT (UHIT) to build an equitable and inclusive organizational culture for a diverse 800-person staff. This work began in 2020 with supporting C-Suite leaders to partner with the founding members of the Black Advocacy Workgroup (BAW) to address the needs of BIPOC employees at all levels of the org. We set specific goals and outcomes and set out to equipping leaders, managers, and individual contributors with essential skills, vocabulary, and mindsets for leading equitably. Through strategy design, manager training, small-group coaching, retreats, and regularly-scheduled learning sessions, UHIT leaders built equity into all aspects of their organizational culture.
Marilyn brought a rare and valuable gift to our organization with her ability to deliver difficult messages and meaningful lessons with candor, humility, and grace. Her calm, no-nonsense presence created the kind of psychological safety that allowed our team to genuinely engage with complex DEI topics rather than shy away from them. The result was not just a conversation, but a shift, and one that left our workplace culture more thoughtful, more inclusive, and arguably stronger. We are better for having engaged with her.
-David Fraquelli, Director, Business Operations, UCLA Health IT
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.