My approach to consulting prioritizes ethical and responsible co-creation, amplifying experiential and lived knowledge of community partners. By leveraging access to resources and intentionally shifting power dynamics, I aim to build mutual capacity to drive impactful, sustainable change.
Explore what I’ve been up to. . .
Women Designing Their Futures
Creating pathways for growth and reintegration to support system-impacted women in Chicago
WIND (Women Initiating New Directions) is a transformative organization dedicated to empowering women at risk of or with a history of incarceration. Through innovative programs, WIND supports women in designing a thriving life journey by providing them with the resources, strategies, and tools necessary for long-term success and reintegration.
In my role, I provided research and design support, elevating the voices and expertise of Lived Experience Leaders throughout the process. Through a trauma-informed and gender-responsive lens to program design and facilitation, I helped create a safer and empowering space for system-impacted women to reclaim their agency and confidently plan for their futures. Additionally, I supported efforts to synthesize participant feedback and iterate on program components to enhance engagement and impact. To promote sustainability, I contributed to strategies for scaling the program while honoring our commitment to elevating lived experience and sharing power.
Peak Pathways
Nurturing youth-centered design to build equitable trajectories for college and career readiness
Under the stewardship of Dr. G’s Lab, a trauma-informed design consultancy, we partnered with Peak Education to co-create a digital application supporting youth on their journeys beyond high school.
As a facilitator and youth researcher, I led efforts to establish a care-full and responsible approach for co-design, ensuring students were meaningfully engaged as active collaborators throughout the design process. My role involved capacity-building and mentorship to help students navigate their role as co-designers and shape the design and development of the project. By integrating principles of trauma-informed design with UX methodologies, I helped create a supportive space that amplified students’ voices and prioritized their lived experiences, in service of cultivating shared visions for equitable access to opportunities for personal growth and professional development.
Pedagogies of Possibility
Blending critical artmaking and ethnographic research to forge just educational futures
Over the course of a multi-year engagement, I collaborated with Dr. Shirin Vossoughi’s research lab and MetaMedia—a digital media and maker space advancing creative possibilities for youth—to facilitate an annual 6-week summer program for Black, Latine, South Asian, queer, and trans middle-schoolers, supporting the co-creation of a dignifying and humanizing learning environment rooted in feminist, abolitionist principles.
In this project, I played a pivotal role in guiding the design and research process, leveraging collaborative ethnography and creative, participatory methods. My contributions included mentoring youth participants, facilitating creative workshops, and fostering intergenerational collaboration between artists, educators, and researchers. This work ultimately led to the formation of a pedagogical zines collective to fuse collaborative research and art, creating public community resources to imagine just educational practices.
Condition Confidant
Fostering peer mentorship to cultivate networks of mutual support for personal health management
In partnership with the Center for Food Allergy and Asthma Research at Feinberg School of Medicine and Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, we launched a pilot program to connect high school students with college mentors to support their transition to managing food allergies independently.
As a design lead, I developed a mentorship framework, informed by community-based research, to enhance the mentor-mentee experience. Additionally, I coordinated logistical workflows, gathered and synthesized participant feedback, and iterated on program components to address emerging needs. To support scaling, I helped create a roadmap to expand the program's reach while preserving its personalized, peer-driven approach.