Emily is an Experience Designer, a role in which she helps enable the human-centered transformation of our most critical social systems. While at BIF, she has worked on projects to redesign services with Plan International, United Way of Rhode Island, and a network of agencies that work across RI to serve adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities. She is driven by a passion for collaboration, a value for bringing underrepresented voices to the table, and by creating new and improved ways to work together for increased impact.
Prior to working at BIF, she served four years in the Peace Corps as a grassroots community development facilitator in Peru, leading youth development initiatives at a local level and supporting national-level programs to promote gender equality with CARE Peru and Peru’s Ministry of Women and Vulnerable Populations. She graduated from Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service with a major in International Politics and a minor in Latin American Studies, and is bilingual in English and Spanish.
Outside of BIF, Emily has diverse interests but especially loves to read, write, run, travel (especially around Latin America), listen to live music, and spend time outdoors. She has run two half marathons, spent four days rafting down the Amazon river, descended (and ascended) the deepest canyon in the world, trekked in Patagonia and the Atacama Desert, and visited Machu Picchu three times. While she is a RI native (born in Newport!), she has also spent time living in San Francisco, CA; Madison, WI; Washington, DC; Charleston, SC; Vina del Mar, Chile; outside London in the UK; and most recently in the Colca Valley of Arequipa and Lima, Peru. She believes deeply in intersectional feminism and human rights of all kinds, and most enjoys spending her time volunteering in her community or hanging with her friends and family– she is the oldest of four!