I grew up in Seattle, and I’ve lived internationally in Mexico and Honduras before moving to Tucson in 2005 to pursue my Masters in Public Health in Health Education.

My dissertation for my Doctorate in Public Health Policy and Management focused on the role of social capital in a community health worker (CHW) model for grassroots community advocacy. Through a mixed-methods research design, I learned that CHWs exhibited high bonding social capital, and increased their bridging and linking social capital after receiving training in community advocacy. I developed a model to describe the relationships between social capital and my qualitative findings: in essence, that CHWs play a unique role in community advocacy efforts by using their social capital to develop leaders, unite people, build new partnerships, make voices heard, approach power players, and take issues up the ladder of command.

I am the lead evaluator for Arizona’s SNAP-Ed program and the Principal Investigator on the project. I worked for Arizona’s SNAP-Ed program at the University of Arizona Cooperative Extension for ten years before becoming an external SNAP-Ed evaluator. In addition to leading the Arizona SNAP-Ed evaluation team, I enjoy presenting topics of evaluation interest in graduate level University of Arizona courses, at national conferences, and within the SNAP-Ed professional community. My research interests include:

• Innovating SNAP-Ed evaluation at local, state, and national levels
• Best practices in program planning, implementation, and evaluation
• The economic contribution of SNAP-Ed
• Community and grassroots advocacy to address heath disparities
• Utilization-focused evaluation

I enjoy reading, salsa dancing and travelling with my son and husband. My public health passion is empowering people and families to be their own greatest advocates, and I hope to capture and celebrate communities’ successes in creating healthier communities through Arizona’s SNAP-Ed evaluation project.