About

I never anticipated becoming a Title IX Coordinator; it’s not a job that shows up at career fairs when you are in high school. Or college. Or in law school, at least not in 2004, the year I told my career counselors that I didn’t want to work in a firm or as a prosecutor, but I’d like to do good and maybe work with young people (while still be able to pay my bills as a single woman without a partner to help subsidize non-profit work). Their answer wasn’t, “Let me introduce you to education civil rights compliance.” It was more, “Lol good luck.” Actually, that was a pretty accurate foreshadowing of my job...

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I've been working in higher education for nearly twenty years, over half spent in sexual misconduct response and Title IX. I love Title IX work: it's my calling. And I'm good at it: in 2019, I was the first Title IX Coordinator to win the National Sexual Violence Resource Center’s “Visionary Voice Award,” an honor recognizing the creativity and accomplishments of individuals around the country who have demonstrated outstanding work to end sexual violence. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t really proud of that. But I’m even prouder that the Tulane student body named me Administrator of the Year in 2017, just eighteen months after I started at the school. (The award came with Mardi Gras beads; we are so on brand.) 

 

I have a unique expertise in using campus climate surveys, and it has set me apart from the usual Coordinator. After two years at Dartmouth College, I reared back, shocked over how badly we had conceptualized campus sexual assault. In response, I wrote my 2014 Higher Education Policy graduate thesis that proposed a prevention- and remediation-focused approach to the issue, one that made me feel like I was the black sheep at every conference I attended. I was bucking the traditional Title IX Coordinator mold of a lawyer focused primarily on investigation and adjudication: for me, the emphasis is on preventing sexual assault and getting my university invested in this work. It’s how I’ve developed an international profile: participating in roundtables and working groups convened by the Department of Justice and the American Bar Association, the European Conference on Domestic Violence, and conducting webinars teaching other Student Affairs and Title IX professionals how to embrace a public health approach driven by data and research—while still being totally clumsy at math and science. But if this girl with a Creative Writing degree and dyscalculia can figure it out, there is no excuse for all of the smartypants Ivy League attorneys and governmental lawyers staffing the nation’s elite Title IX offices to do the same.

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And there's no reason you--and your schools, your organizations, your communities--can't embrace data to create change, too.

 

Even though I loved being a Title IX Coordinator, after so long in the field, I jumped at the opportunity to move to the United Kingdom (big thanks to that spousal visa...!). And I'm ready to help more than just one school at a time. So as I settle in to my new English life, I am helping my client institutions in using data to develop effective, practical solutions for colleges to address issues of belonging and inclusion (and Title VI and Title IX compliance concerns) in their communities.

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There's no excuse for not doing everything we can to improve our communities--for our students, for ourselves. Let me partner with you--let's create the change we deserve.