You know how some people geek out on Star Wars, Harry Potter, or sports teams? I geek out on research.
Research has been one of my greatest passions since childhood. It’s in my blood, how my brain is wired, and what I’ve been trained to do. I have 20 years of real-world research experience, and conducting research has been the one constant in every job and business I've had.
RESEARCH ISN’T JUST AN OCCUPATION FOR ME, IT’S HOW I NAVIGATE LIFE.
It is how I SEE and UNDERSTAND people and the world. TBH I can't really turn off my 'research' mode, it’s who I am (just ask my exes!)
RESEARCH IS THE ‘FAMILY BUSINESS’
I was born into an inquisitive way of thinking, being, and living as offspring of Ph.Ds, and a highly educated extended family. As I talk about on my values and lineage pages, my childhood centered around exploring, investigating, and learning about ourselves, others, and, like, EVERY other topic under the sun.
CURIOSITY was not only welcomed but FERVENTLY ENCOURAGED and MODELED 24/7.
I don’t remember a single instance where I was told by my parents or family, “you ask too many questions” or "we don't talk about stuff like that." Asking WHY constantly got me in trouble everywhere else, but not at home!
RESEARCH WAS OUR WAY OF LIFE, and the scientific method was simply how we gathered knowledge about the world around us.
We watched documentaries and fictional shows in equal measure, and had stacks of National Geographic’s, encyclopedias, and academic texts (instead of comics and coloring books) which helped resolve dinner time debates!
Some days it felt like research and science were our 'religion' and University was our church.
MY BRAIN IS WIRED FOR RESEARCH and innately transdisciplinary.
As a NEURODIVERGENT, I’m OBSESSIVE about the things that capture my attention – aka my special interests.
I don't ever “dabble” or just get kinda into subjects for a few weeks. My interests become MY WHOLE LIFE for years and decades.
This means I suck hard at moderation, BUT it also helps me go to a depth that many people can’t. I look at things from every angle, repeatedly, and notice details and connections that others miss because MY BRAIN IS WIRED DIFFERENTLY.
Some would say I’m “too much”, but I've LEVERAGED this characteristic in my biz, and that’s what CLAIMING YOUR SPACE AS A DIVERGENT is all about!
MY NEURODIVERGENCE is also one of the reasons I don’t get hung up on TRADITIONAL disciplinary boundaries. It’s why I have been able to weave together so many seemingly disparate fields and forms of knowledge to IDENTIFY and NAME previously unseen phenomena and create TRANSDISCIPLINARY theories and solutions.
I’m like a BLOODHOUND WITH MY RESEARCH. I don’t care where it leads or how many yards, fields, and forests I have to SCOUR to find the answers.
IS WHAT I’M TRAINED TO DO.
I spent 7 years as an undergrad and PhD student, studying methodologies and designing and conducting research that integrated:
The Social Sciences (Psychology, Sociology, and Cultural Anthropology) to better understand why we think, act, and talk the way we do as individuals and collectives.
Business + Organizations (Marketing, Consumer Behavior, Organizational Culture and Theory, Leadership Development, and Human Resource Management) to improve employee wellbeing and move businesses/organizations towards more socially conscious business models.
Ethics + Law (employment discrimination, human rights, comparative legal studies) to identify and address systemic oppression in the workplace and society.
QUALITATIVE METHODS MAKE MY HEART SKIP A BEAT + YIELD RICH, DETAILED DATA…
But I’ve also been trained in quantitative techniques.
MY RESEARCH TOOL KIT includes:
Ethnography; Interviewing; Surveying; Focus Groups; Case Study; Naturalistic and Participant Observation; Content, Thematic, and Narrative Analysis; Literature Review; and a whole bunch of complex statistical analysis methods like regression and multiple correlation (that I don’t really remember despite being at the top of my class #honesty).
TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH EMBODIES DIVERGENCE
At university, I employed interdisciplinary methods and theories, which was considered boundary pushing research back then. Transdisciplinary research, which extends beyond the scientific community and incorporates indigenous and practitioner knowledge, wasn’t even talked about, ESPECIALLY IN BUSINESS.
These days, my research is Transdisciplinary because I'm not only concerned with "is it true" but also "does it work" AND is it “equitable?” Transdisciplinary methods give me the space to design anti-colonial research, that values and utilizes knowledge of ALL kinds, instead of being extractive and hierarchical (both serious issues in academia).
In addition to my academic training, I have 20 years of research experience in the REAL world.
Why does it matter? Because the world isn't a laboratory. YOU DON’T LIVE IN A VACUUM. And what is “true” doesn't always work.
What real-world research has taught me is that the methods we learn in academia often lack pragmatism, exclude valuable insight, and feel inaccessible. This isn't to say they don't have value, they absolutely do, it's to say that we need to account for the colonial and scientific biases embedded in them. When we don’t do this, we end up with research that only partially advances our understanding, and rarely gets used for anything.
TRANSDISCIPLINARY RESEARCH IS INCLUSIVE AND DESIGNED TO BE INTEGRATED, not sit on a shelf.
The necessity of transdisciplinary research became clear to me while working in the non-profit sector in my late 20s and early 30s. I spent 5 years researching policy; running stakeholder focus groups; surveying and counseling employees and leaders; and interviewing volunteers, families, and job applicants, and it helped me see past the academic-practitioner divide.
Prior to that, I truly thought practitioners didn’t know shit #biasedAF
But being in-the-trenches showed me how much we were “LEAVING ON THE TABLE” with traditional research methods.
There was all this knowledge and expertise just sitting there that no one was touching because it didn’t come from “scientists.” And the research that did come from scientists? Few knew about it, and fewer still trusted it.
I've developed 4 ways to reduce these biases, and the academic-practitioner disconnect, so that the research WE conduct is USEABLE:
I use a holistic, QUEER lens and apply systems thinking so we have meaningful context, and don't flatten complex issues or ignore the relationship between theory, data, and method (source).
I get ‘buy in" and gather information from a range of stakeholders because multi-rater (360 degree) feedback improves accuracy, AND actively and intentionally engages participants, making the integration of findings easier and more effective.
I weave together indigenous, academic, and practitioner - knowledge, expertise, and intuition - to support Divergent thinking and create new and innovative knowledge and solutions.
I utilize immersive, layered, and 'personal' methods rather than drawing a hard and artificial line between myself and the subject so that I can build trust, gain a deeper understanding of the issue, and connect to the emotional and spiritual impact of this work, on EVERYONE involved.