Biography
Stephanie is a research, policy and communications practitioner whose work has centred on 'home'.
Her research focuses primarily on refugees, asylum-seekers, and unaccompanied children including: how refugees re-make home in displacement; the role of beauty and aesthetics in refugee responses; refugee shelter programmes; refugee-led organisations; refugee self-reliance; child protection; and systems change and innovation in policy and programme response.
On a communications front, Stephanie works to translate and disseminate research to be relevant and accessible to as many people as possible. She has led marketing, video production, and web design for a range of human service organisations. She served as the national spokesperson for the United States Office of Refugee Resettlement to increase protection for forcibly displaced migrants and led crisis communication during emergency responses to influxes of migrants.
She has worked locally, nationally and internationally on a range of program and policy initiatives, which have included:
- Co-leading the Assessment, Measurement and Evidence Working Group for the Alliance for Child Protection in Humanitarian Action;
- Serving as a policy analyst on migration, refugees, unaccompanied children, human trafficking, and gender-based violence for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation to increase research capacity and the use of evidence in policymaking;
- Managing the City of Boston’s emergency homeless shelters and housing programmes and coordinating citywide efforts to end homelessness;
- Designing more than a dozen youth and family programmes, building citywide partnerships to innovate service delivery, and co-founding 'Soccer Nights', a national programme that unites communities across lines of difference.
Stephanie holds a bachelor’s in social work from Gordon College and a master’s in public administration from Harvard University Kennedy School of Government. She was a 2015 United States Presidential Management Fellow and a 2021 Policy Leader Fellow at the Florence School of Transnational Governance.