As an Evaluation Research Analyst with the MD program at Stanford Medicine, I work on a team of researchers, instructional designers, and educators to evaluate program operations and curriculum innovations. Leveraging a combination of qualitative research methods and leading edge research tools like GPT-4 and Tableau, I help investigate research questions, analyze data, and develop reports for stakeholders.

As a researcher and Strategic Partner with From the Ground Up AZ, I helped lead research for one of the largest gap analyses of services for homelessness, food insecurity, and substance abuse in the U.S. Through analysis of surveys and interviews from over 1,200+ people living on the street, waiting in line at food banks, and accessing addiction treatment services, and interviews with 75+ elected officials, city leaders, service providers, business owners, faith community leaders, and homeowners, I developed cohesive narratives about the reality of homelessness in each of the 10 largest cities in the Phoenix metro area.

Leveraging my skills in adult learning and graphic design, I created a series of educational infographics designed to help elected officials and service providers understand areas of agreement, opportunity, and anomalies found in the research.

As a project manager at Design Pickle, I helped develop tailored onboarding experiences for small-business customers at a SaaS graphic design company. Noticing patterns in customer churn, I created a paid onboarding product called Creative Kickstarter.

Designed to eliminate common onboarding pain points while offering customers a fresh, creative take on their graphic design assets, I pitched the idea of distilling the elements of adult learning, consultative sales, and creative direction into scalable onboarding sessions that were affordable for customers and easy for staff to deliver. I led product testing and eventually led training for 15+ sales and account management staff to market, sell, and deliver the product. I published product e-books, knowledge base articles and webinar curriculum for customers and created custom sales enablement tools, training guides, and job aids for staff.

Over the course of 18 months, I served as a creative director and project manager to over 75 small business owners seeking creative support for ~200 graphic design projects, with deliverables that included brand guides, social media marketing collateral, landing pages, and custom artwork.

At the University of Colorado School of Medicine, I helped MD faculty improve the quality of their teaching through the creation of digital tools that highlighted gaps and redundancies in the MD curriculum.

To help MD educators gain insight into the collective effort of their teaching, I facilitated one-on-one working sessions and group workshops to help collect, refine, and organize their curriculum content. I then developed a system to code their curriculum content fusing national standards, NBME learning hierarchies, and topics identified as important to their particular teaching community. I upload their content into an online SaaS database and worked with a faculty member to build a Tableau dashboard. Insights from the Tableau dashboard reports helped illuminate gaps and redundancies in the MD curriculum and enabled faculty to better utilize their teaching time, build new inter-disciplinary teaching partnerships, tackle persistent issues, and intentionally adjust their teaching.

I also helped educators support students in real-time by developing a system to code exam items and then analyze exam performance data immediately after exams to identify areas where students needed extra support to learn a particular topic or concept. Overall, this work impacted over 400 MD students and over 20 physician educators. I translated what I learned into a curriculum technology workshop for fellow education administrators at the WGEA AAMC conference in 2017.

In 2019, as part of a campus-wide Curriculum Reform initiative, I was appointed by the Dean to co-lead 1 of 4 leadership committees. Responsible for creating plan to improve MD assessments, I helped lead the committee in researching promising practices at peer institutions, completing a comprehensive review of all existing assessments, and developing new assessment policies that facilitated student learning and minimized academic competition.

At the Stanford School of Medicine, I helped create systems that enabled greater curriculum cohesion and collaboration among students and faculty.

To learn more about the persistent barriers to faculty collaboration in the MD program, I helped implement a listening campaign, through which we learned more about the individual experiences of educators and their common pain points, needs, and motivations. We then developed a unified request for teaching support that highlighted areas of need that had not been previously identified or well understood. This work led to the creation of the inaugural office of Preclerkship Education and new funding to support collaborative teaching innovation.

Additionally, in response to feedback from student educators, I helped re-design the MD Teaching Assistant Training program through a partnership with the Stanford Center for Teaching and Learning. By incorporating more near-peer learning activities and sessions with master teachers into learning activities, we increased trainee participation and satisfaction. I co-presented my process at a panel presentation with the Assistant Dean at the WGEA Association of American Medical Colleges conference in 2015.

In addition, from 2012-2015, I oversaw all administrative aspects of the Preclerkship curriculum, which included curriculum evaluation, overseeing the production of required learning materials, hiring guest lecturers, and supervising full-time staff. I earned a Stanford Staff Management certificate in 2015.

At Arizona State University, I helped develop and implement innovative programs that increased learning opportunities for systematically underserved students.

TRiO

After graduating from TRiO Upward Bound at Arizona State University in 2004, I traveled to Capitol Hill in 2005 to lobby for continued Department of Education funding. In 2006 I served as a summer resident assistant and ENG 101 instructor, and in 2010 I helped establish the first TRIO Student Support Services office at the Arizona State University Downtown campus. As a program coordinator, I helped recruit the inaugural cohort and facilitated learning experiences that enabled students to build skills in self-directed learning, self-advocacy, and financial wellness. In addition, I managed a weekly tutoring program, classroom note-taking program, and accessible learning lab for students with physical disabilities. I also served as a mentor for the inaugural Obama Scholars program in 2010.

Professional Development School

As a coordinator in the Professional Development School at the Mary Lou Fulton Teacher’s College, I helped manage multiple projects related to improving the quality of teaching across Arizona. I helped manage PDS, an innovative Masters in Education program delivered by building video-conference equipped university classrooms at elementary schools near the US/Mexico border and on Navajo and Tohono O’odham tribal lands. In addition to facilitating classroom logistics and regular classroom site visits, I helped manage a program governance committee comprised of 15 school district superintendents and 30+ teaching staff across Arizona. I also assisted the Assistant Dean in managing the applications for additional US Department of Education grants supporting this work, eventually totaling over $23M.

“Grow Your Own” grant

As a researcher for the “Grow Your Own” program, I investigated teacher preparation strategies focused on developing and retaining teachers from the local community, offering a more sustainable, community asset-based alternative to programs like Teach for America. I traveled to south Chicago to meet with grassroots education activists at the Kenwood-Oakland Community Organization and used what I learned to help assemble a team of neighborhood organizers, faith community leaders, business owners, and elected officials to collectively apply for a US Department of Education Grow Your Own grant in Downtown Phoenix.

ASU Civic Engagement and Leadership Summer Camp

I helped develop and implement the inaugural ASU Civic Engagement and Leadership Summer Camp for local elementary school students. The week-long program included multiple classroom learning activities and field trips for a group of 20+ students aged 8-12, and culminated in a youth town hall hosted by local business leaders and a Phoenix city council member.

As a graduate intern, I helped identify and apply for funding opportunities to support a community of Spanish-speaking workers negatively impacted by SB1070 in 2010. I helped secure grant funding for the Center’s Anti-Wage Theft campaign and assisted in planning the center’s Community Wellness Day.

As a Resource Development Specialist, I helped identify and apply for a wide variety of grants to support program activities for Chicanos Por La Causa, the largest Latino-serving community development corporation in the Southwest U.S. Grant opportunities included education programs, addiction treatment and senior living facilities, domestic violence shelters, workforce development programs, and economic development initiatives. I was successfully awarded $50K to support continued programming at De Colores, the state’s only domestic violence shelter serving monolingual Spanish speakers, and $30K to create a new financial wellness program in rural, southern Arizona.