CONSULTING

What is often called exceptional ability is nothing more than persistent endeavor. – Pauli Murray (1987)

Scientific Knowledge and Public Health are not the solution, but they must be a part of it.

More often than not, communities hold deep knowledge of their problems and a vision for necessary and just solutions. What they might not hold are the academic credential, the policy and scientific jargon, or the skills to navigate those environment; all of these things are learned through privilege. 

As someone skilled at living in the in between (Black and white in the South; academy and community; immigrant child and American) I want to work with community experts with intrinsic (read: lived) knowledge to help build and maintain powerful movements for change. I want to work with academics and scientists with acquired (read: paid for) knowledge who are committed to learning and unlearning how to work in the service of communities. 

I have been a grassroots organizer for over a decade and see my work in public health as a service to bring light to the concerns of impacted communities, uplift their expertise, and advance protective solutions. I have earned and steadfastly work to maintain the trust of community groups in North Carolina and the Bay Area through years of collaboration, including incarcerated folks, unhoused folks, seafarers, people who struggle with substance use, farmworkers, folks living downwind and downstream of polluting industries, and South Asian and other Third World communities. 

Having honed my skills in systems building, project management, public health and public policy research and writing, strategic planning and development,  and communications, I am available to consult on various topics and projects. I see myself as part of a long line of professionals and scholar activists, such as Ida B. Wells and Pauli Murray, who come from community and want to use their acquired knowledge as a tool to build the path towards collective liberation.

We must continuously work to create and make possible the future in which we desire to live.

Protective Public Health Strategies

Public health always tells us to look for upstream causes, but as a positivist field, it often stops short of reaching across disciplines or challenging the status quo in its search for the right kind of “evidence”. I work with academics to expand their single-discipline training in order to broaden what are seen as "useful methodologies" and the "right data" in the public health and scientific disciplines. I also work with communities in order to use my scientific, policy, and health expertise to advance health-protective solutions and community self-empowerment.

Inclusive Research and Policy Recommendations

Research and policy are learned skills from the academy, and are only inaccessible due to systemic and physical/digital barriers. I believe firmly in open access of knowledge and research, and while I do not believe peer-reviewed literature prioritized over community-generated literature, I also understand its power in change making. In any research or policy consulting, I have a collaborative and educational (if desired) approach to use my skills to support and train community researchers to ask and answer the questions they need.

Organizational Consulting and Facilitation

I have a collaborative and relational approach to organizing and organizational development, and am committed to helping organizations build accountable and transparent systems and create processes which prioritize interdependence and transformative power. No one is beyond making mistakes or causing harm, but many people live in fear of doing just that. Accountability and transparency are fundamental to all aspects of how we relate to each other and integral to sustain our movements. My approach is holistic and accessible; I believe that none of us live in vacuums, and it is integral to gather everyone’s perspectives before getting to work. 

Cover Photo Brooke Anderson Photography | @movementphotographer