My Mission
DRIVING AND Designing research-backed solutions for work-family justice
I bring deep expertise in gender and the family, intersectional inequality, and work-family policy to design and create human-centered solutions to seemingly intractable social problems.
For five years at the non-partisan think tank New America, I led research, editorial and content strategy for the Better Life Lab, a team of researchers and writers working for work-life justice and gender equality across the United States. The Lab produces original research and reporting, translates academic research for the public, and supports journalism on policies and solutions like universal child care and paid family leave.
Today, I continue that work by collaborating with the Better Life Lab and with several other organizations and thought leaders. I am open to writing and speaking opportunities, and to long-term research and development projects to produce workable solutions to intersectional inequalities.
Culture change cannot come through one person’s voice or one tool alone. That’s why I have trained over one hundred academics and aspiring writers in pitching and writing for mainstream outlets, and I have edited over 300 articles by other authors for national publications, increasing the number and diversity of voices speaking out about family inequality and calling for change.
It is my mission to produce original data, storytelling, and interactive tools on work, gender, and care, and to transform U.S. culture, workplaces and social policy so that all people can thrive across the arc of their lives. I’m available to speak, write, edit, research, and design the pieces and products that will change the way we work and live.
PROJECTS
Work Life Everything
With sociology professor and inequality expert Leah Ruppanner and corporate social impact leader Lauren Berry, I run the website Work Life Everything, a research-backed home base for all the information, analysis, and advice working parents and caregivers can use. As a contributing editor and writer for the platform, I use an intersectional feminist lens, experimentation, and an ongoing pursuit of the best and newest data to answer the everyday questions our audience faces and build and improve the supports today’s families truly need. With a particular focus on the mental load, I am developing tools and workshops that organizations and individuals can use to lighten the load of women and caregivers.
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BETTER LIFE LAB EXPERIMENTS
Over the last decade researchers and advocates have driven an explosion of awareness of the critical gender gap in unpaid labor in the home. Despite a majority of mothers working for pay outside the home, they still do two to three times as much child care and housework as their male counterparts. But solutions for families who recognize they have a problem and want to correct it are scarce and daunting. BLLx, or Better Life Lab Experiments, uses the latest research and tools from behavioral science and sociology to help families create change, one small experiment at a time. With over 30 original experiments, a thousand dedicated “beta testers,” and ongoing expert advice and user feedback, Brigid Schulte and I help families move the needle on this once-intractable problem.
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EDITOR and CONNECTOR
When I left academia to edit the Better Life Lab vertical for Slate and New America in 2017, my task was to take the trickle of feminist research that found its way into mainstream news media and turn it into a firehose. It has been clear to me ever since that social change and narrative change are interlinked, and that narrative change requires more storytellers from more diverse backgrounds telling research-backed stories that matter. I’ve given dozens of workshops to academics and activists on how to pitch and translate what they know deep in their bones to a story editors and readers will want to follow.
Are you ready to join the conversation? Send me a pitch, an idea, or even a hunch, and I’ll help you find the right frame and the right outlet to amplify your voice.
Driving narrative Change
MY TOOLS
GREATEST HITS
THIS COUNTRY IS A RISKY PLACE TO BE A PARENT - WASHINGTON POST
DADS, COMMIT TO YOUR FAMILY AT HOME AND AT WORK - HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW
WHY EVERY NEWS OUTLET NEEDS A DEDICATED CHILD CARE BEAT - COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW
PLEASE STOP CALLING EVERYTHING THAT FRUSTRATES YOU “EMOTIONAL LABOR” - SLATE
WHEN IT COMES TO WORK-FAMILY POLICY, U.S. RACISM STYMIES COMMON SENSE SOLUTIONS - WORK LIFE EVERYTHING
RECENT APPEARANCES
LEVERAGING DATA AND NARRATIVES TO RESHAPE CAREGIVING ACROSS GENDER - A HEALTHCARE COMMUNICATIONS COMPANY
WHY WE NEED A DEDICATED CHILD CARE BEAT -
NEW YORK PRESS ASSOCIATION SPRING CONFERENCE
DOING FEMINIST WORK -
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY, ST. LOUIS
TACKLING THE INVISIBLE LABOR -
WW INSPIRE SERIES
MOMS ARE WORKING, WHY AREN’T
MATERNITY POLICIES? -
SXSW
Understanding Intersectionality, the Care Crisis, and Work-Family Justice
Why is intersectionality important to policymaking and workplaces?
Intersectionality is a key tool for creating social and cultural change. The term “intersectionality” derives from Black feminist thinkers from the twentieth century, and describes the way in which power in our society is distributed through complex, interconnected identity categories, including race, gender, sexuality, and ability. To understand how institutions like government and workplaces reproduce inequalities around particular identities, or how they could be reformed to actually reduce identity-related inequalities, our social movements, our media and culture, and our society in general, must understand how intersecting identities have historically been tied to power or a lack thereof, and how our contemporary structures have continued or interrupted such challenges.
WHAT IS the care crisis AND HOW DO WE SOLVE IT?
In the United States, some individuals and families have always faced what could be called a “care crisis,” due to poverty, systemic barriers, and job and political discrimination that disrupted families and caregiving, dating back to the founding of the country. Today the phrase is used to describe the intense privatization of caregiving costs and labor and limited public investment in care uniquely characteristic of the U.S., and a growing scarcity of caregivers for those, both young and old, who need them. Many cite both the immense expenses of child care and elder care, and the frequency with which women in particular leave the labor force to care for loved ones as symptoms of a growing crisis. The COVID-19 pandemic brought renewed attention to the care crisis in U.S. media, but adequate policy supports and public investments have yet to follow.
What is work-family justice? and Why is counting and valuing unpaid labor so important?
Work-family justice is a goal shared by the growing care movement, the feminist movement, and the labor movement in the United States, which strives to give all workers and their families the support they need to live happy, safe, and healthy lives, regardless of the work they do or their identities and backgrounds. Advocating for work-family justice involves viewing problems and inequalities with an intersectional lens, and noting how U.S. politics and policies have given workers and families different and unequal conditions for both earning a sufficient living and providing care and love across their lives. Achieving work-family justice means instituting policies that work for all families and workers and building a culture of support for care and labor that values their contributions.
Most measures of the U.S. economy and how it’s doing include rates of participation in the paid labor force, with high participation being a good thing and low participation representing a problem. But an intersectional lens reveals those measurements don’t always capture the most critical work being done. Even when employed, women and people of color perform high rates of unpaid work, like housework, child care, and care for disabled and elderly adults, that allows others in society to engage in paid work and spares the public from having to pay for this care. Unpaid labor can also include a heavy mental load as well as emotional labor, and is often invisible to those who most benefit from it. While many find this labor fulfilling, the fact that it is uncompensated leaves those who perform it uniquely vulnerable in our society. The work-family justice movement seeks to ensure their security and happiness, and views their contributions and critical to the well being of society as a whole.
Education
THE OHIO STATE UNIVERSITY
PHD, WOMEN’S, GENDER & SEXUALITY STUDIES DISSERTATION: REPRODUCING INEQUALITY: COOKING, CLEANING AND CARING IN THE AUSTERITY AGE
Graduated August 2016
MA, WOMEN’S, GENDER & SEXUALITY STUDIES
Graduated May 2011
VANDERBILT UNIVERSITY
BA, ENGLISH AND WOMEN’S AND GENDER STUDIES
SUMMA CUM LAUDE
Graduated May 2008