About Me

I teach. I research. I write. I consult.

I am a Clinical Associate Professor of Public Service at New York University Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, where I teach and research leadership for social justice at the intersection of race, class, gender, and place. At NYU, I am a member of university-wide initiatives, including the Community-Engaged Scholarship Task Force, the Women's Leadership Forum Steering Committee, and the Latinx Project Advisory Council. During the academic year 2024-25, I was a Senior Fellow at the University of Richmond Bonner Center for Civic Engagement.

Before joining NYU, I spent nearly twenty years in multiple institutional contexts -- from government and nonprofit to academia -- to build the capacity of teams, organizations, and networks for social change. I held various roles, including strategy consultant, executive director, deputy director, program director, program manager, and executive assistant. I began my career in public service in local and state government, serving as a policy analyst for the New York City Council and the New York State Education Department during the administrations of Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki. I was a founding board member of the Virginia Latino Higher Education Network and a past member of the National Advisory Board of Imagining America. I began part-time teaching at the university level in 2012 and have since taught undergraduate and graduate students at Bard College, Drew University, Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts at The New School, and the University of Mount Saint Vincent.

As a research and strategy consultant, I work with social justice leaders to transform their teams, organizations, and networks. My collective work experience enables me to orchestrate possibilities to thorny structural dilemmas that get in the way of these leaders doing their best work. I also draw on my graduate training as a qualitative and applied social science researcher, leaning on participatory action research approaches. My clients represent the following areas: the arts/culture, higher education, film/media, grassroots organizations, and philanthropy; they are geographically dispersed, hailing from San Juan, Puerto Rico to the Rio Grande Valley in south Texas to a small college town in Massachusetts and points in between, with a majority based in the NYC tri-state area.

As a writer, I’ve contributed essays to online journals such as Public Seminar, The New Historia, and Intervenxions. Furthermore, I contributed a book chapter to an edited volume on a participatory data collection method inspired by the Free Southern Theater's story circle practice, published by Manchester University Press. My expertise in community-engaged research has been sought as a peer reviewer for academic outlets such as Evidence & Policy and Social and Personality Psychology Compass.

I received an M.A. in Sociology and Education from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Education, Teachers College, and have completed training with the Rockwood Leadership Institute, Emergent Strategy Ideation Institute, and the Public Science Project's Critical Participatory Action Research Summer Institute.

Most important to me, I am the daughter of a first-generation Mexican American woman from the Tex-Mex borderlands who served in the U.S. Army Women’s Auxiliary Corps and a Black man who integrated his Teamsters Union in 1970s Virginia. My earliest lessons in public service are from my parents and my experience as a first-generation college graduate. My proudest leadership role is that of mother. I call The Bronx, NY, home, where I reside with my partner and our teenage son.

*Hablo, leo y escribo el español.