Hannah Whitley Email and Phone Number

Supports the management of pre- and post-grant processes within the largest school district in Connecticut, including tasks related to The Foundation for Excellence in Bridgeport Public Schools.Researches and pitches state, federal, and private grant opportunities, coordinates and writes grant applications, handles proposal and budget revisions, and disseminates funding opportunities.Oversees award compliance, manages budgets, tracks expenditures, and ensures timely submission of programmatic and financial reports.Maintains relationships with grant funding agencies and internal departments, develops grant management systems and policies, and assists with communication strategies.Works under pressure in an environment where priorities constantly change and compete.Building the newly formed Bridgeport Public Schools Center for Applied and Collaborative Educational Research (BPS C-ACER).

Used transdisciplinary science to examine collaborative strategies in environmental and natural resource governance and social marketing for reversing inland freshwater salinization in Virginia's Occoquan Reservoir. Planned and executed mixed methods social science research to evaluate the effectiveness of stakeholder engagement and collaborative governance approaches.With a transdisciplinary team, secured $75,000 in funds from the National Science Foundation's Civic Innovation Challenge to facilitate community and practitioner engagement activities to identify concerns and potential solutions to drought, population growth, and water quality in the Occoquan Reservoir.Directed a targeted social marketing program in the Occoquan water and sewershed to evaluate its impact on reducing sodium non-point contributions.Facilitated quarterly focus groups and joint fact-finding sessions, engaging 70+ stakeholders affiliated with the Executive Committee on the Occoquan System.Mentored and oversaw the professional development of a half-dozen civil and environmental engineering graduate students in transdisciplinary research, social science data collection and analysis.

Secured $119,966.00 in federal funding to examine how multi-stakeholder collaborative governance unfolds in the context of heightened political activism and natural resource stress. Independently designed and conducted 15 months of ethnographic fieldwork examining stakeholder engagement and water governance in the Klamath Basin, a transboundary watershed on the border of Oregon and California.Observed 100+ water management meetings, conducted 32 interviews with stakeholders of varying socio-cultural and political ideologies, and completed in-depth archival research at six separate museums and records centers.Effectively communicated research findings to stakeholders at the local, state, federal, and international level.Received significant media and academic interest, including podcast interviews, news articles, and invited talks and lectures at multiple universities.

Research Assistant to Dr. Kathryn Brasier on the "Stakeholder Engagement in Water for Agriculture" project funded by the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Water for Agriculture grant no. 2017-68007-26584/project accession no. 1013079 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture.Investigated stakeholder engagement strategies impacting water quality and quantity in agricultural contexts. Analyzed two longitudinal waves of interviews with 200+ agricultural and natural resource stakeholders.Designed three statewide surveys and collected survey data from a sample of 317 respondents.Authored public reports of quantitative surveys in five site locations.Led a team of four undergraduate research assistants across four different sites in a content analysis of 800+ articles on stakeholder engagement in water resources management.

Secured $14,970.00 in funding from the USDA’s Northeast Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education program to identify barriers and opportunities for cooperation and resource sharing between rural and urban women farmers.Independently designed and carried out six months of ethnographic fieldwork assessing best practices for historically marginalized farmers and gardeners in Pittsburgh, PA.Conducted 30 formal, semi-structured interviews with urban agriculturalists, non-profit representatives, and agricultural service providers.Coordinated and disseminated results from a participatory photography project at 10 different agricultural and natural resource education and policy events (halted in March 2022 due to COVID-19).

Studied the conditions and mechanisms driving communities to undertake climate-related actions, including collective mobilization and governmental policy changes.Conducted content analyses of media articles related to community reactions to extreme weather events in 12 regions across the United States.Received high-caliber training in ethnographic, policy analysis, survey design and analysis, and ethical research design training.