Projects & Presentations
In partnership with Kate Yang, PhD, (George Washington University), Sanjay K. Pandey, PhD (George Washington University), and Emma Northcott (George Washington University) we explore crisis leadership through a discrete choice survey experiment with elected officials in local government organizations. The study aims to refine the conditions under which elected officials select City Manager candidates in times of crisis. The findings may reveal implications for crisis management, and personnel decisions made in uncertain times. This research was presented at the American Society for Public Administration 2025 Conference on March 30, 2025 at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, DC and the District of Columbia (DC) Public Management Conference (PMC) at the Georgetown University's Capitol Campus on March 27, 2025.
Crisis Leadership in Municipal Government
Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) - and the Promise of AI Technology in the Federal Government
In partnership with Sanjay K. Pandey, PhD (George Washington University), we explore how DOGE plans to use Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the federal government. Our work seeks to establish themes of applying AI that are applicable to the federal government. We explore the application of AI in settings such as private business and local government, to make comparisons and to test how AI will apply in the federal government.
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This research was presented at the 2025 Marc Holzer Public Performance Symposium Balanced Approaches to Performance Management in the Age of Emerging Technologies on March 28th, 2025 in Washington, DC. For more information click here.
PUBLIC SCHOOL EDUCATION FOUNDATIONS: Advancing Equity, Excellence, and Innovation
In partnership with Michael Worth (GWU) and Sanjay K. Pandey (GWU) we interview Public Education Foundation Chief Executive Officers to explore the role that Public Education Foundations play in public education. Through our conversations with Public Education Foundation CEO's we develop brief case studies. The case studies highlight how foundations raise funds and provide support to public school systems to enhance their programs and impact. Our findings will be published by Rowman & Littlefield with a book expected to be released in late 2025.
Addressing Complex Problems in Local Government: Town Managers Strategies for Leading in Increasingly Dynamic and Demanding Environments
For this dissertation, I explore complexity from the perspectives of Town Managers, using their experiences as a form of reality testing and situational recognition to provide insights into the practical aspects of municipal management by exploring leadership in context. Complexity leadership theory (Marion & Uhl-Bien, 2001) provides the lens to review town managers' ability to adapt and scale leadership strategies to balance the inherent tensions within diverse contexts. To explore perspectives further, I engage with Town Managers through semi-structured narrative interviews and compare findings from the field with scholarly work to propose a new framework for addressing complexity within public management. This research highlights the intersection between town managers' responses to complexity and the associated outcomes for their communities.
