Organizing for Health
Who’s Involved
KATE HILTON I RUTH WAGEMAN I ELLA AUCHINCLOSS I DAN GRANDONE I TERRI JOWERS I ERIN MCFEE
MEREDITH MIRA I VANESSA DILLEN
Project Directors:
Kate B. Hilton, JD, MTS, is the Director of Organizing for Health, a project of ReThink Health, and a Principal in Practice for Leading Change at the Hauser Center for Nonprofit Organizations at Harvard University. She designs campaigns, teaches organizing and leadership skills, and strategizes with leadership teams to take action. In 2010-11, Ms. Hilton served as the lead coach for a campaign to improve quality and lower costs in the National Health Service in England. She has led organizing and leadership training for a multitude of organizations including the Institute of Healthcare Improvement, the South Carolina Hospital Association, the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts, and many others. Ms. Hilton taught in Dr. Marshall Ganz’s organizing course at Harvard Kennedy School in 2004 and 2009 and co-designed and led the distance learning version of the course in 2010. Ms. Hilton received a JD from the University of Wisconsin Law School in 2008, an MTS from Harvard Divinity School in 2004 and an AB from Dartmouth College in 1999. She is licensed to practice law in Wisconsin and Massachusetts.
Ruth Wageman, PhD, is Director of ReThink Health Research, a project of ReThink Health. Dr. Wageman directs ReThink Health’s suite of projects in the areas of evidence and research design and leads its research and evaluation efforts. With Kate Hilton, she directs Organizing for Health, also a ReThink Health project, which takes a community organizing approach to the transformation of health and health care. Dr. Wageman is Associate Faculty in Psychology at Harvard University, where she specializes in the field of Organizational Behavior, researching the conditions under which people are able to accomplish great things, especially in collaboration with one another. She has published prolifically on a range of subjects in organizational behavior, including Senior Leadership Teams: What it Takes to Make Them Great, 2008, co-authored with Debra A. Nunes, James Burruss, and Richard Hackman. Dr. Wageman earned a PhD from Harvard’s University’s Joint Doctoral Program in Organizational Behavior in 1994 and a BA in Psychology from Columbia University in 1987, where she later returned to teach at the Graduate School of Business as the first female alum to join Columbia’s faculty. She served on the faculty of Dartmouth’s Amos Tuck School of Business and as a Visiting Scholar in Leadership at the Kennedy School of Government.
Ella Auchincloss’s experience combines her early career as an investment professional with her commitment to the Episcopal Church. From 2003-2008, Ella served as Treasurer of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. In response to what she saw as diocesan treasurer, Ella founded the Diomass Leadership Development Initiative: a teaching and coaching program dedicated to deepening congregational leadership capacity for mission and community outreach, based upon the work of Marshall Ganz. This initiative is entering its third year. She also serves as leadership development coach and lead trainer for the social justice interns in the Episcopal Diocese of MA.
Ella served as a Community Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School studying Leadership and Organizing with Marshall Ganz and later worked with as a member of Ganz’s Teaching Team. She has led numerous trainings and skill clinics for a wide variety of nonprofit leaders and organizations. In July 2011, Ella joined Organizing for Health, an initiative of ReThink Health, supported by the Rippel Foundation. At OfH, she serves as director of training and business development.
Prior her work in leadership studies, Ella spent 11 years with the Bankers Trust Company in New York as both a trader and sales professional in the fixed income capital markets and she worked for New Generation Advisers in Boston, raising investment funds. Ella holds a Masters in Theological Studies from the Harvard Divinity School and a Bachelor of Science in Finance from Babson College. She lives in Boston, Massachusetts with her husband and two teenage sons. She enjoys golf, tennis, cooking, Nordic skiing, cycling and spending time in the White Mountains of New Hampshire.
Dan Grandone is a Campaign Coach with Organizing for Health in South Carolina. Dan started in community organizing more than 12 years ago. During this time he has built grassroots organizations in some of the most impoverished inner city communities throughout America that have delivered historic victories. From 1999-2006, he worked in St. Louis, Missouri as a faith-based organizer on a variety of projects including a workforce development agreement on the largest highway construction project in state history. In 2008, he played an integral role in Barack Obama’s Presidential Campaign where he developed strategy, hired and trained hundreds of organizing staff and implemented one of the most successful state programs in the country.
Dan became the Wisconsin State Director with Organizing for America and helped pass national health care reform, ran one of the largest 2010 mid-term election field organizing programs in the nation and was directly involved with the recent workers right’s protests. He has trained thousands of organizers and leaders throughout the country and most recently in the Middle East. He received his bachelor’s degree from Marquette University, Masters in Social Work from St. Louis University and Masters in Public Administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University studying social movements and non-profit administration. He was a Teaching Fellow at Harvard University with Dr. Marshall Ganz, with whom he taught community organizing.
Terri Jowers is the Lead Organizer for Organizing for Health in South Carolina.
An eighth generation South Carolinian, Terri Jowers has deep commitments to her family, her state and her faith that have led her to a life of community organizing. While studying History, Political Science and Speech & Drama at Clemson University, she became active the South Carolina Democratic Party serving on the State Executive Committee and working on numerous elections and legislative campaigns as advisor, manager and volunteer coordinator. In the 2010 cycle, she was a Field Organizer in the SC Democratic Coordinated Campaign.
Alongside her organizing work, Jowers has served as Administrator of Holy Apostles Episcopal Church and School, Director of the Coalition to Assist Abused Persons, Coordinator of Guardian ad Litem, and co-author of a handbook for children going to court. She has received awards for her work as the South Carolina Victim Advocate of the Year and the Greater Edisto Chapter Red Cross Outstanding Volunteer. She is active in her church, the Snack Sack Program, the Southern Carolina Boys & Girls Club, and the Red Cross. Living most of her life in a very rural county, Jowers is passionate about greater access to services, particularly health care and mental health.
She has had the honor of raising a cousin, two social-activist sons, helping her father with the family farm, and being a caregiver to several family members through hospice. She loves reading, antiques, entertaining, canoeing and Shape-Note Singing.
Erin McFee is concerned with the human experience of learning, reflection, and growth, and in particular, the way in which interpersonal relationships can facilitate this process. Her current research focuses on the use of expertise in teams and the contexts and processes that support or undermine groups’ ability to solve complex problems.
She co-authored with Bruce Warren and Susan Sampson, “Business Schools: Ethics, Assurance of Learning and the Future,” Organization Management Journal. She also co-authored numerous cases and teaching notes on professional service firms, organizational identification, and teams. Her other research interests include: leadership, leading change, issues of subgroups, stigma, and violence. She is also conducting independent field work in Colombia on the process of reintegrating ex-combatants from illegal armed groups into the civilian population. McFee teaches for the Princeton Review and is an undergraduate admissions consultant.
McFee holds an MBA from the Simmons School of Management, a B.S.B.A. in Finance from Boston University’s School of Management, and a Certificate from the Harvard Kennedy School’s Executive Education program on Leading Change. Hobbies include violin, snowboarding, and outdoor activities such as camping, hiking, cycling, and kayaking. She will be applying for doctoral programs in Sociocultural Anthropology in the fall of 2012, and she lives in Belmont, Massachusetts with her partner, Ben, and their cat, Charlie.
Meredith Mira is a research associate at Organizing for Health and an advanced doctoral student at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. Her research focuses on the development of socio-political awareness among young people in schools and in youth organizing groups.
Meredith Mira’s research seeks to understand how young people from various racial and socioeconomic backgrounds begin to see, make sense of, and act against inequality in their communities. She has pursued this area of inquiry in two settings. First, she studied youth organizers at Boston’s Hyde Square Task Force, finding that young people need a sense of awareness about both themselves and their communities as well as a space to act and the belief that they can make a difference before they will take action. She is pursing similar questions in her dissertation research at a New England private school that focuses on social justice education.
While working on her doctorate, Mira had the opportunity to participate in a 5-year study, led by Professors Mark Warren and Karen Mapp, of six community organizing groups across the United States working on school reform. The study culminated in the publication of a book, “A Match on Dry Grass: Community Organizing as a Catalyst for School Reform.” She is also the co-author, with Mark Warren and Thomas Nikundiwe, of a paper, “Youth Organizing: From Youth Development to School Reform.” Her study of organizing led her to both take and subsequently serve as a teaching fellow from 2008-2010 for Marshall Ganz’s Public Narrative course at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. She has since served as a coach and facilitator for both public narrative and organizing trainings with Ganz and Leading Change.
Mira is an advanced doctoral student at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education. She received her BA in Communication and Culture from Indiana University in 2000, her MA in Higher Education Administration from the University of Michigan in 2004, and her MA in Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education in 2009.
Vanessa Dillen, JD is the project coordinator at Organizing for Health. Her background is in legal services and large-scale organizational reform efforts.
After receiving her J.D. from UC-Hastings in 2006, Vanessa worked for several years in the Family Law Self-Help Center of San Francisco Superior Court. There, she empowered litigants to represent themselves in their legal cases and worked to improve the efficiency and accessibility of court processes.
In Massachusetts, she consulted to the Middlesex Probate and Family Court, the largest probate court in the Commonwealth, where she improved the delivery of services to litigants by creating and leading trainings, revising court forms to improve accessibility, and making improvements in the supervision and training of employees. She also provided analyses of obstacles and recommendations for systemic change.
Vanessa has extensive experience writing for a wide variety of audiences and enjoys finding ways to convey complex ideas in simple language.
She currently sits on the Board of Directors and serves as Treasurer for The Network/La Red, a social justice non-profit working to end partner abuse in the LGBT community. Her past work includes providing legal services to low-income domestic violence survivors, working on a legal information hotline, and multiple stints planning academic conferences. Her love for logistics and organizing has made her the go-to person at many friends’ weddings.
Vanessa holds a J.D. from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law and a B.A. in International Relations from Tufts University. She is licensed to practice law in California and Massachusetts. She loves bicycling around Boston, cross-country skiing, and working to improve her French accent. She lives on-campus at Harvard College as a Resident Tutor in Kirkland House with her wife, Voop.