About

The Practitioner’s Foundation

My career in higher education began in research with a question that shaped every professional conviction I held since: What happens to African-American boys in elementary school when School Resource Officers are in the building? This was my entry point into policy work as it lands on the bodies and futures of underrepresented students in the system.

At the Center on Metropolitan Development, I applied rigorous academic discipline to accurately assessing community needs and translating that analysis into actionable institutional strategy. By grounding research in robust methodological frameworks, I helped ensure that recommendations were evidence-based and capable of informing decisions with lasting regional impact. This work demanded both scholarly precision and the ability to communicate complex findings to diverse stakeholders. The most consequential analytical work is the work that questions who is being counted, who is being served, and whose outcomes are being treated as acceptable losses.

That orientation became the intellectual framework through which I approached every enrollment strategy, fellowship program, and admissions process I would later design. The researcher and the executive have always been the same person, operating at different scales toward the same ends.

Learning What Accountability Actually Feels Like

The transition from research to institutional leadership rarely happens in a single moment. It accumulates over time. One of my earliest defining experiences came when I found myself at the center of an accreditation site visit.

Managing an accreditation process requires operational competence and the confidence to represent an institution’s work honestly and defend it under scrutiny. I collaborated with the department to manage every dimension from preparation through final response.

I gained an understanding of the weight of institutional credibility and what it takes to protect it. I left that position with a deep fluency in accreditation standards, assessment frameworks, and the relationship between program quality and institutional reputation. A foundation I would draw on for every leadership role that followed.

Building Something from the Ground Up

My move into director-level leadership at a private business school was, on paper, a promotion. The more meaningful shift was in the nature of what I was now accountable for which included six graduate programs, revenue targets, a matrix team, and students whose academic and professional futures were shaped, in part, by decisions made in my office.

The numbers tell part of the story $1.8 million in annual revenue, enrollment growth year over year, and projections consistently exceeded. But underneath those numbers was a complete operational build such as a CRM-driven recruitment communication plan using HubSpot and Slate. The automated communication plan became a prototype adopted by other departments across campus. Ultimately expanding the institution’s reach through new strategic partnerships with community colleges, private industry, and nonprofit organizations.

Running parallel throughout was my executive coaching practice. Coaching was the space where I worked through the same questions of equity, access, and growth with clients across sectors. It kept me sharp, kept me honest, and gave me a practitioner’s understanding of how organizations actually change.

The Work at Scale

When I arrived at a major research university as Director of Admissions, I stepped into a role that brought together every dimension of what I had spent two decades building. I managed processes, served as a strategic partner, and was held accountable for $10.5 million in annual tuition revenue.

The operational scope was significant with more than 800 applications annually. I built data systems to ensure that every enrollment decision was grounded in evidence, not instinct.

The work I am most proud of is harder to quantify. I expanded relationships with community colleges and institutions serving underrepresented students to widen the pipeline into graduate education. I built government collaborations that created genuine new pathways to graduate programs, and developed a multi-year partnership recruitment strategy that generated long-term corporate and government relationships — adding durable value to the school and its partners alike.

I did not inherit a community. Instead, over the next four years, I built a community relationship by relationship.

The Through Line

What connects the researcher asking hard questions in 2005 to the executive managing a $10.5 million enrollment portfolio in 2025 is a consistent set of convictions carried forward through every role, institution, and coaching engagement.

The evidence should drive decisions. The relationships are the infrastructure on which everything else is built. The access to graduate education is a product of institutional will that must be actively and consistently exercised in the direction of communities that have been excluded. And the most important thing a leader can do is develop other leaders who will carry the work forward long after I have moved on.

Why Now

I spent twenty years accumulating the experience, the frameworks, and the relationships that make this coaching practice possible. I have sat in rooms where enrollment decisions were made, where fellowships were awarded, where pipelines were built or abandoned. I know what it costs when institutions get this wrong — and what becomes possible when they get it right.

I do this work because the leaders driving graduate admissions and enrollment deserve a thought partner who has actually done it — someone who can help them move faster, build smarter, and lead with the kind of integrity that produces outcomes worth being proud of. That is what I offer. And it is, in every meaningful sense, what I was always building toward.