About Emily
M.A. in Composition · Twelve Years Teaching Writing and Composition in Higher Education · Grant development strategist with more than $20 million in federal, state, local, and foundation funding secured and developed.
THE STUDY
12 Years Teaching writing and composition in higher education
$20M+ in Funding developed and secured across federal, state, county, local, and foundation funding programs
Federal Grant Experience - Success with major federal agencies, including the Department of Education, Health and Human Services, and Department of Labor and many others
Community & Technical College Specialist - Expertise in workforce development, institutional capacity building, and grant strategy for two-year colleges
Grant Systems & Institutional Strategy
Designed and implemented institution-wide grant development systems, processes, documentation, and complex workflow at multiple colleges
Institutional Leadership - Current accreditation and Institutional Effectiveness committee member supporting continuous improvement and organizational effectiveness
THE STAIRCASE
I came to grant development by way of the classroom. Consequently, I have never quite thought of it as fundraising. It has always been more like the facilitation of steps and generating and producing important ideas.
For twelve years, I taught writing, English, and composition in post-secondary education. Most of my students were doing some version of the same hard thing by trying to turn a half-formed thought into something someone else could actually follow. I built my teaching and classroom around the idea that writing is a way of thinking, not just a way of presenting thoughts you'd already had. Students often showed up unsure or just didn’t trust their own ideas and left able to say what they meant, clearly enough that other people took it seriously.
The writing itself was rarely the hard part. The hard part was in the translation of taking something that mattered enormously to the person who dreamed it up, and making whoever they were writing for understand why it should matter to them too.
THE WORKSHOP
This doesn't really show up on a resume, but it became a center point of her career. Teaching people to think and write more clearly, then helping the strongest of those ideas find the resources to become real. Most ideas don't die from being bad. They die from never getting written down clearly enough for anyone else to fund them.
The Writing House is what happens when that center point gets named and worked on with purpose. Underneath it are six things that her work actually needs to be worth doing: contribution, learning, teaching, creativity, community, and beauty.
THE HORIZON
There is a longer arc to this story, one that runs toward Spain.
It is a more deliberate version of the life Emily is already building. None of the work requires her to be in any one place. Writing, fundraising, consulting, teaching all travel fine. Spain is where she wants to be doing it. In a place with real culture and real community, not just a backdrop.
The Writing House is built around the idea that work can travel with me because it is rooted in the core values of contribution, learning, teaching, creativity, community, and beauty, rather than a specific location.
The Writing House is the name she's given to that intention, one project at a time.