Laura Lane Email & Phone Number

As a professor of rhetoric and writing, I developed multicultural curricula for University of North Florida students preparing for public school careers. Upon completion of my doctoral degree in English, I decided to take my research, writing and facilitation skills out of academe. Since then I have been documenting the impact of social services on clients and communities. In 2000, I joined the Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. where I learned the power of solution-focused, community decisions. I facilitated solutions to specific human services challenges, including dropout prevention, services for ex-offenders, neighborhood health, and aging in place. I have presented posters at conferences of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO) and the American Evaluation Association. In 2005, I started working closely with both United Way of Northeast Florida and the Jacksonville Children’s Commission, contributing to the development of program outcomes adopted by the city’s largest youth services agencies. I contributed to the City of Jacksonville securing a $765,000 grant from the Wallace Foundation for out-of-school time programming, and led an initiative to redesign after school programs across the city. Since 2009, I have worked periodically with the Kettering Foundation on community health strategies, the role of faith communities in democracy and effective practices for community dialogue and decision-making. In 2012, I re-joined the team at the Jacksonville Community Council, Inc. as Vice President. While there, I secured $250,000 from the Baptist Health Foundation for a successful report on community mental health services. As a result of this work, I moved into Vice President at Mental Health America of Northeast Florida in 2016. For the past two years, I managed the day-to-day operations of a small nonprofit as well as its bullying prevention program that reaches 10,000 students each year.

Listed skills include Community Outreach, Fundraising, Research, Public Speaking, and 21 others.