Education

I have always prioritized life above school, starting in Junior High when I played hooky to volunteer for a senatorial campaign. But I do love to learn and have accumulated some schooling along the way.

In 2010-2011 I stepped away from my work with the Family Caucus to finish (finally!) my B.S. in Political Science from Brigham Young University with a business minor. The most interesting part was my emphasis in comparative politics and senior capstone aggregating all of the existing double-blind, placebo-controlled research on microcredit. At that time, truly scientific analysis of international development interventions was groundbreaking.

In 2012 I was accepted to Pepperdine University’s #1 rated M.S. in Organization Development program. Areas of study included “self as an instrument of change,” leadership development, organization design, team dynamics, culture change, appreciative inquiry, and building networks and partnerships. The highlight was serving on the steering committee to design 4.5 days of curriculum for the China practicum on networks and strategic partnerships.

My masters’ thesis is on tri-sector (public, private, and non-profit) trans-organization collaboration. Because organization development is a field which practices action research, my thesis is incomplete as I wait for a good real-world opportunity to test my theory.