Here's some of the work I'm proudest of:

I'm the Head of Program & Curriculum at Ever Scouts, where we believe that what kids learn, and how they learn it, needs to change. We're a venture-backed startup creating interactive media that helps kids learn life skills - like empathy and self-awareness - that prepare them to be responsible to themselves and others. We believe that learning should be engaging, relevant, active, and fun.

As the first hire of the co-founders, I designed the curriculum from the ground up, including leading a research team to define the core set of life skills necessary for personal and social responsibility in the 21st Century, which we call The 12 Keys. I built and ran our pilot program - an innovative summer day camp centered around life skills - and worked with an interdisciplinary team of creators and technologists to co-create our subsequent digital programs, including hiring and training our first corps of Guides and creating our model for live, facilitated adventures.

Currently, I lead our work to develop research-based curriculum that informs our content, our partnerships with schools, and our research and evaluation work. One thing I'm particularly proud of is designing an evaluation system called the Responsibility Quotient - a first-of-its-kind behavior-based assessment that objectively measures kids' responsibility through what they do, not what they say - and hiring a talented research team to bring it to life.

Peace First believes in the power of young people to change the world, right now. At PeaceFirst.Org, young people ages 13-25 from around the world can access online trainings, personalized coaching, and $250 mini-grants to help them start a social change project. 

From 2019 to 2021, I led Peace First's talented Program Team, and created our flagship Fellow-in-Residence program, which hires the world's top youth activists for a year-long, paid Fellowship to recruit, train, and fund other young people to make social change. I hired our first staff in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, and scaled our work globally, increasing the number of youth-led projects we supported by 600% over two years with a flat organizational budget. I also managed our Evaluation & Program Design and Digital Product teams.

From 2017 to 2019, I played a variety of roles at Peace First, including leading curriculum design and development, co-creating the Peace First Summit, designing and managing youth mobilization campaigns with partners like Everytown for Gun Safety and the Carnegie Corporation, and - my personal favorite - leading the delivery of Lady Gaga's Born This Way Foundation's Channel Kindness Awards, sparking 25,000 youth-led acts of kindness along Gaga's Joanne World Tour route.

TPI trained hundreds of high school students in 15 states to teach our nationally-recognized bullying prevention curriculum, helping kids lead the work of creating schools where everyone belongs.

I started TPI with four friends as a high school student. We had each had our own experiences with bullying when we were younger, and were disappointed by bullying prevention curricula we saw as insipid and irrelevant. We also realized that peers - not adults - had the most influence over young people's social behavior. So we built and led a peer education program in our school - and soon kids around the country wanted to take part. I became the organization's Executive Director and managed a volunteer team that helped launch student-led TPI chapters around the country.

With support from the Allstate Foundation, the Rathmann Family Foundation, and the Yale Entrepreneurial Institute work impacted tens of thousands of students in the US & Canada. We received the Jovial Concepts National Peace Prize and were a semi-finalist for an Echoing Green Fellowship.

 After graduating college, I passed the work on to current students to carry it forward. To learn more about where the work stands today, please contact me!

Since 2018, I've served on the Board of the International Bullying Prevention Association, as we work towards a world without bullying by convening providers and researchers, sharing and advocating for adoption of best practices, and working with Facebook and the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence to engage students to create welcoming schools.  

I worked with the American Friends Service Committee for three years to co-lead a youth leadership and activism training program in a high school in the West Virginia coalfields. Our students lobbied at the West Virginia legislature, spoke at rallies for the Green New Deal and education funding, and, with our help, many became the first in their families to go to college.

As a Dara Rei Onishi Fellow in the Office of Early Learning, I led development of a state Early Childhood Pedagogy Guide and an Early Math training resource. 

Later, I worked with the West Virginia Higher Education Policy Commission to produce a report on student attitudes towards college-going and the impact of various college promotion strategies.

After working on Justin Elicker's mayoral campaign and spending my summers teaching in New Haven, I was encouraged to run to represent Yale's campus on New Haven's Board of Alders. 

We took on an incumbent and came up short, but used the campaign to mobilize Yalies and New Haveners alike to advocate for a shift in the way Yale students saw the city and call for a new culture of citizenship on campus. After the campaign, I continued that work, including through serving on the Downtown-Wooster Square Community Management Team and writing a regular Yale Daily News column bringing New Haven issues to light. 

Many of the changes we advocated for have since taken effect: 

• Changing the way students are introduced to New Haven at orientation, including creating a New Haven preorientation program for first-years
• Creating dedicated city engagement teams within student organizations like the Yale College Council and College Democrats
• Increasing student engagement and meaningful, impactful service in partnership with community leaders
• A student movement to encourage Yale to increase its voluntary contribution to the City of New Haven

I was awarded the Head of College and Dean's Award at graduation for my work to bridge divides between Yale and New Haven and create a culture of active citizenship on campus. 

• Caitlin's Big Idea, a pilot for an original children's television series, created as my senior thesis at Yale
• Served as Campaign Chair, Finance Chair, and Senior Advisor for political candidates from city council to statewide office 
• Go South Charleston, a project that brought Yale undergrads to work remotely as summer interns with Charleston, WV nonprofits in Summer 2020 
• Past Board memberships: Calvin Hill Day Care Center, City of New Haven Peace Commission