I approach my leadership position as a supporter, advocate and mentor. Working as a foreigner in a country often mired in crisis, I support the community in their solutions. This includes having conversations around the issues they deem important, listening and learning local solutions, finding resources and funding through my network to support those solutions and to guide them in professionalism that focuses on creating trust based relationships. I implement tracking systems for accountability. My objective in this position is to raise the Haitian staff to the level of professional workmanship that makes me obsolete, so they can recover their sovereignty from an NGO system.

I work to build programming at Jakmel Ekspresyon in collaboration with research faculty at the University of Cincinnati to develop research on Community engagement, STEAM education, student participation in education and policy change at a local level. These classes and programs merge the arts with science and environmental justice to empower our students to create local policy changes. My duties are site program leadership, conduct interviews, report data and co-author publications.

I provided Instructional Fabrication Studio leadership for three distinct programs at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, including Contemporary Practices, Fashion and Fibers.I worked with faculty, Department Chairs and students to find their needs and develop appropriate fabrication studios, safe working practices, systems of access and training. I focused on student feedback and leadership to help build and implement a digital fabrication studio dedicated to Freshman and a dye studio to facilitate fashion students. I also trained staff on maintenance for all equipment. An aspect of acting on student feedback required me to define ways to help students, who have physical disabilities and learning differences, so that they may advance in their studio work at the same pace as other students.While developing new studios I worked with architects, project managers and construction teams to ensure the studios were designed to nurture creatiuve learning. A goal of studio development was to allow the students a work experience that is easy and made any background work invisible, so that they may concentrate on their studies.As a leader, I strove to lift my staff to higher positions. Many of my staff went on to other studio leadership positions. My position oversaw 4 managers, 4 Assistant Managers and 36 graduate and undergraduate work study students per year.