The following portfolio items were selected to demonstrate the knowledge, analytic approach, and practical skill set most relevant to this project. Collectively, they reflect experience in curriculum and resource development, systems analysis, implementation support, policy and program evaluation, and work grounded in equity, lived experience, and structural change.
Each item is included as evidence of an integrated practice approach: identifying the mental models and underlying structures that perpetuate harm, translating complex systems thinking into usable frameworks, and developing tools and materials that support real-world application in organizations and communities working toward justice and collective liberation.
Community Leaders Project Letter of Intent
What it is: A letter of intent for a proposed paid MSW practicum initiative designed to expand leadership pathways for underrepresented and marginalized students through community-based macro social work placements. This proposal succeeded in securing $75,000 from the Mid-Iowa Health Foundation to launch the Community Leaders Project.
Why it is included: This piece reflects an early and sustained commitment to building leadership pipelines for individuals whose proximity expertise is most often excluded from systems-level decision-making. It demonstrates concrete experience in program design, partnership development, and creating structures that reduce barriers to participation in public service leadership, grounded in the conviction that those closest to the problem hold the vision necessary to identify the right solutions.
Child Well-Being Assessments Instruction Manual
What it is: A user-facing implementation guide developed to support CASA volunteers in completing child well-being assessments consistently, accurately, and in ways that generate meaningful data for program improvement and systems advocacy. This manual was developed during the implementation phase of a comprehensive child well-being data system designed from the ground up and piloted across five counties over an 18-month period.
Why it is included: This artifact demonstrates the ability to translate a complex assessment and data collection process into a practical, accessible tool for frontline users. It reflects experience building implementation infrastructure that connects day-to-day practice to broader organizational learning, and a commitment to ensuring that knowledge generated closest to the community is captured and used to drive program improvement rather than lost in implementation gaps.
Educator’s Guide to Compassion Fatigue
What it is: A trauma-informed self-care workbook created to help educators recognize compassion fatigue, prevent burnout, and strengthen resilience through guided reflection and practical exercises.
Why it is included: This resource demonstrates curriculum and workbook development for a professional audience, including the ability to package research-informed content into a polished, accessible, and immediately usable format. In the context of the FEP facilitator training specifically, it also reflects a practical understanding of the tension NBCDI names explicitly between resilience and resistance, and the importance of equipping practitioners to sustain work alongside communities navigating ongoing systemic harm.
Narrative as Infrastructure: How Storytelling Shapes Systems Change
What it is: A practice-oriented framework examining how storytelling can be used strategically to shift mental models, shape public understanding, strengthen collective action, and support systems change efforts.
Why it is included: This piece is directly relevant to the advocacy and organizing components of the updated FEP curriculum. It addresses a specific challenge the curriculum must meet: how participants can use their own stories strategically to seed new mental models rather than inadvertently reinforcing deficit framing. It demonstrates the ability to translate systems change theory into a clear, actionable framework useful to practitioners and community advocates.
The Epistemic Erosion Spiral
What it is: A structured systems analysis examining how the systematic exclusion of lived experience knowledge weakens a field’s capacity for meaningful systems change.
Why it is included: This framework traces the specific mechanisms by which proximity expertise gets filtered out of the institutions designed to serve those communities, and the conditions under which that knowledge can be restored to its rightful place in policy and program design. It is included both as evidence of the theoretical grounding and systems analysis capacity brought to this work, and to demonstrate the deep alignment between the core theoretical framework of The Macro Lens and NBCDI’s own Afrofuturist Systems Design Process. These models reinforce one another at the level of foundational principle: systems change is not possible when the mental models that produced the harm remain intact, and those mental models cannot be transformed without restoring the knowledge and agency of those most affected by them.
Credible Messengers RFP Analysis
What it is: A policy and systems analysis of a public-private partnership RFP, examining budget design, authority relationships, implementation risk, and long-term program sustainability.
Why it is included: This piece demonstrates the ability to critically evaluate formal program structures, identify hidden risks in institutional design, and translate technical policy and procurement language into clear, actionable analysis. It reflects an approach to systems work that attends to the concrete underlying structures that determine whether programs genuinely serve communities or extract from them.
Taken together, these portfolio items reflect a practice grounded in systems thinking, implementation realism, equity-centered analysis, and clear communication. They are intended to demonstrate not only subject-matter expertise, but also the ability to develop practical, thoughtful, and accessible materials in service of organizations working to transform the mental models and underlying structures that have denied Black children and families the quality of life they deserve.
Additional information regarding professional background, education, and relevant experience is provided in the attached résumé.
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