Working with nonprofits, cities, and local stakeholders in Cleveland, OH and Michigan City, IN.

I worked as a Program Associate on Heartland Alliance's Research and Policy Team in the Illinois Asset Building Group (IABG) project. IABG is a statewide coalition of policy makers, community organizations, financial institutions, researchers, and advocates committed to increasing the financial security of Illinoisans. I managed IABG’s statewide asset building coalition through providing technical assistance, leading meetings, public speaking, and connecting with social media outreach and newsletters. I co-coordinated the Bank On Chicago initiative with the City of Chicago Treasurer’s Office, including technical assistance to community organizations, and creating and managing multiple grant programs to disperse funding to over a dozen organizations to provide financial education. I researched, analyzed, and wrote technical briefs, blogs, published articles, and policy toolkits on financial matters affecting low-income individuals and families, involving retirement savings, college savings, predatory lending, emergency savings, and credit building. Coordinated IABG’s 2012 Conference; designed conference materials, and led multiple sessions. Presented webinars on individual development accounts, alternative small dollar loans, credit building, the racial wealth gap, prepaid cards, and Bank On Chicago. I Analyzed municipal and state legislation and policies related to asset building issues. I authored grant applications and reports, including a research proposal for Bank On Chicago.

The National Transitional Jobs Network is a national coalition of transitional jobs, subsidized employment, and workforce development programs. I researched and wrote best practice policy briefs on workforce development topics including working with homeless populations and how transitional jobs employers can provide additional job security to the benefit of both employer and employee. I assisted in coordinating NTJN’s 2012 National Conference, and designed conference materials. I performed demographic projections, data assessment, and policy analysis.

I analyzed qualitative and quantitative data, and coded speech patterns. I co-created a coding schema, and analyzed qualitative data for a study on the use of software modeling tools used in planning for regional water use and conservation. I contributed to research design to test the use of GIS tools in regional water planning.

I wrote SPSS Syntax to analyze a survey on political orientation and the Great Recession. I researched and wrote an article published in an industry newsletter evaluating the transparency of the survey research eld since the inception of online surveys.

I managed a research project studying learning using fMRI brain scans, which involved participant recruitment, data collection, management, cleaning, and analysis. I analyzed fMRI brain scans and behavioral/cognitive measures for a learning study, a Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) study, and a massive Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) study using the analysis programs of AFNI, DTI Studio, MatLab, and Analyze.

Using Final Cut Studio I edited video projects for individual, corporate, and institutional clients.

One of two full time research assistants in an NIH funded smoking cessation study. I was responsible for the recruitment of study participants, follow-ups (participant retention) and the accuracy of the study’s day-to-day schedule. For recruiting participants I negotiated advertisement buys in various mediums on a set monthly budget. I conducted screenings in person and over the phone with hundreds of applicants. In addition to these administrative duties I was also responsible for 2/3rds of the study’s participants. This involved all visits and troubleshooting individual participants’ needs and problems.