From 1999-2002, I was President of the Board of the Chicago Children's Advocacy Center.

From 1990 to the present, I have served on Boards, consulted on strategic planning and Board development, run staff and Board retreats, and presented workshops on non-profit organizational development in Eastern Europe.

Thirteen years at the helm of two sizable organizations made analytic and strategic thinking about non-profit operations second nature to me. As a top decision-maker, I had to ensure that all of the organizations’ activities fit within “the big picture” to advance the mission.

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Writing
I earned my PhD in English in 2001 from the University of Chicago, with a full academic scholarship and a dissertation entitled, “An Ethical Analysis of Discourse on Child Sexual Abuse from 1860 to the Present.”

The great benefit of completing this extremely rigorous program was being forced to distill huge amounts of complex research knowledge into well-organized, readable, persuasive manuscripts. Talk about strategic and analytical thinking!

While many academics don’t know how to write a clear sentence, I distinguished myself through my ability to see the main points of complex issues and state them in ways everyone can understand.

If you can’t move hearts and minds, what’s the point of writing?

That was my message as a university instructor of writing (at the Ohio State University), and my credo as an Executive Editor (The APSAC Advisor, The APSAC Practice Guidelines, Child Maltreatment), Managing Editor (The Journal of Interpersonal Violence), named contributing editor (The APSAC Handbook on Child Maltreatment), Associate Editor (Child Maltreatment), and as the author of articles, letters, speeches, brochures, and fact sheets (see samples).

Few of these venues call for one of the most powerful of the writer’s tools: storytelling. But strategic communications are often enhanced by powerful stories, which are an increasingly important as a tool for cutting through message clutter from other organizations. My storytelling ability is on display in Call Me Mommy: A Love Story – my narrative of our family’s experiences in the world of international adoption. Call Me Mommy attracted a top New York agent who is looking for its best publisher.

My current memberships reflect my involvement in both the writing and the non-profit worlds:

• Board Source (formerly the National Center for Non-Profit Boards)
• Society for Non-Profit Organizations (SNPO)
• The Association of Writers and Writing Programs
• International Women’s Writing Guild
• Detroit Working Writers