The map
Forty-three countries, one through line
Lived in six, carried research and evaluation into twenty-one more, and supported right-to-education partners in sixteen others, plus four years of Tibet research where it all began.
Get to know me
Researcher, facilitator, and a quiet kind of organizer. I seek to understand how and what people learn when everything around them is unstable, and my practice asks what sustains us while we do.
The short version
My work seeks to understand learning and education during crises, and my contemplative practice builds on learning to understand what sustains us. Education in emergencies and engaged mindfulness are both about building the inner and communal conditions for people to act, grow, and feel whole when everything around them is unstable. Rooted Action is the umbrella for all of it: the place where my research practice and my movement practice meet. The name says the method.
I hold a dual-title PhD in Lifelong Learning and Adult Education and Comparative and International Education from Penn State. My dissertation was a visual ethnography of women's empowerment in NGO adult education programs in Dadaab, Kenya, and that project set the pattern for everything since: participatory methods, careful measurement, and a conviction that the people research is about should narrate their own learning.
Where the work has taken me
The through line is learning in hard places, and the people who hold it together.
Anthropology at Case Western, with minors in theatre and history, and four years at the Center for Research on Tibet, helping digitize and analyze more than 600 interviews with Tibetan religious and political leaders. That project taught me how much we carry when the world as we know it falls apart. It's where I started to try to understand how other people lived during crises.
The stage manager language I use is directly informed by my work as a stage manager in the theatre program. I learned what was needed to set the stage for others to excel, and that I was good at it.
Built participatory monitoring and evaluation tools with a civic education network. Learned that measurement and programming belongs to communities. Found my passion for education in crises from my colleagues and friends who told me about their educational disruptions.
Taught English with adult refugee learners, my first classroom at the meeting point of displacement and education.
Global Health Corps fellow at the Infectious Diseases Institute, designing mobile and computer-based learning for healthcare workers.
Taught at the American University of Afghanistan and advised the women's leadership group.
Years of research in one of the world's largest refugee camps: an impact evaluation of youth leadership programs, and the visual ethnography that became my dissertation.
Home. I led the Right to Education Index at RESULTS Educational Fund with civil society partners in 23 countries, and since 2018 I have led research, evidence, and learning for education, child protection, and mental health and psychosocial support programs at Save the Children US: principal investigator on outcome evaluations in Colombia, Kenya, Nigeria, Syria, Uganda, and Yemen, impact evaluations in India, Lebanon, Pakistan, Somalia, and Zambia, and psychometric tool development in Bangladesh, Kenya, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda. I co-developed and validated HALDO and ISELA, assessments built to measure learning and wellbeing in crisis.
I also teach graduate courses in monitoring, evaluation, and education in emergencies at American University.
The map
Lived in six, carried research and evaluation into twenty-one more, and supported right-to-education partners in sixteen others, plus four years of Tibet research where it all began.
What I'm good at
Co-developer and validator of ALL, HALDO, and ISELA, with psychometric testing across Bangladesh, Kenya, Iraq, Somalia, Sudan, and Uganda, and adviser to programs using EGRA, EGMA, ASER, IDELA, and CREDI.
Principal investigator on eleven outcome and impact evaluations across education, child protection, and MHPSS, from design through validation workshops to recommendations that change what happens in participants' lives.
Visual ethnography and autophotography, participatory action research, and qualitative design that lets people narrate their own learning. Fluent in Stata and MPlus, learning R and Python, for the numbers and dashboards, NVivo and Dedoose for the words.
MEAL plans for 38 education and child protection proposals to US Government and private donors, built to be used by field teams rather than filed.
Graduate teaching at American University since 2015 and at Penn State, and 299 staff, partners, and enumerators trained in research methods across 15 countries. Adult learning is my discipline.
Facilitation from education and measurement workshops to validation meetings with ministries, now deepened by yoga teacher training and contemplative practice. The container holds the method too.
Start a conversation
Whether you are building a program, planning an evaluation, or looking for a workshop that changes how you feel in your city and self, I would love to hear from you.
rootedaction@gmail.com