Writing
Helping mission-driven leaders use AI responsibly, smartly, and powerfully to create impact you can feel good about.
Substack
Have you ever sat across from an older relative at a holiday dinner and watched them scroll through their phone the entire time? Maybe you’ve caught yourself doing the same thing. Maybe you’ve noticed your own kids noticing. It’s a familiar scene and something I’m sure many of us have experienced.
Twenty years after Facebook was launched to the broader public, we now know a lot more about…
In 2025, everyone had AI opinions. As I’ve written about previously (here and here), the discourse around AI is divisive and doesn’t leave room for questioning and uncertainty. Some headlines insisted you’d be left behind if you didn’t adopt everything immediately. Others warned you’d lose your soul if you touched it at all.
I am becoming increasingly worried about…
A few weeks ago, someone pulled me aside after I’d mentioned using AI in my consulting work. With voice low, they asked: “Can I do this? Is it okay to use this?” The vulnerability in that question has stayed with me. Here was someone (a total badass, brilliant, community-engaged organizer by the way) seeking permission to use a tool and worried they’d be overheard talking about it. Because my feeds are all AI all of the time…
How to Decide What to Disclose About Your AI Use
Lately, something interesting keeps happening: people tell me about their AI use in hushed tones, or ask if I think it's okay for them to use AI. These brilliant mission-driven professionals are wrestling with AI on deep levels. They are carrying concerns about doing it "wrong," fear of being "found out," and worry that AI use conflicts with their morals. It turns out that my transparency and public experimentation has created space for authentic conversation.
AI-Powered Qualitative Analysis with NotebookLM: Part 1
I've spent over twenty years as a qualitative researcher. I learned with highighters and sticky notes, embraced CAQDAS tools like Dedoose, but was never really sure machine learning would have a place in the workflow. But generative AI has shifted my thinking. NotebookLM is Google's free tool that fundamentally changes how we interact with interview transcripts while maintaining methodological rigor. Unlike ChatGPT or Claude, it only references sources you explicitly provide, greatly reducing (but not eliminating) the hallucination problem.
Why Your AI Uncertainty Is Actually Your Superpower
Spend five minutes on LinkedIn and you'll walk away feeling like you must choose: Team "AI Will Save Humanity" or Team "AI Will Destroy Everything." It turns out our discourse on AI is subject to the same polarization influencing the rest of our lives. The algorithms love these extremes, but they're missing the reality I see every day working with mission-driven professionals and organizations: most thoughtful professionals are neither evangelists nor skeptics. They're cautiously curious, and that position deserves more airspace and recognition.
More Writing
What if my organization has no AI use policy?
published on Candid
The absence of a policy isn’t the absence of responsibility. You can take steps to use AI responsibly so you can make better decisions and provide valuable insight when (not if) your organization begins to work on a policy. If your organization is currently developing a policy, get involved. As an early experimenter, your perspective and risk-aware insight will be invaluable to the process.
Collective Learning in Philanthropy: AI, Trust, and the Future of Grant Reporting
published in The Foundation Review
This paper explores how Artificial Intelligence (AI), paired with Oral and Alternate Reporting (OAR) methods, can build equitable, human-centered reporting systems. We propose the E4 framework — Efficiency, Effectiveness, Expansiveness, and Equity — for intentionally leveraging AI in service of more equitable reporting practices.
How to Create an AI Policy: Tips for Nonprofit Consultants
published on Consultants For Good
Whether you call it a policy or set of guidelines, creating a guiding document around responsible use of AI can be a powerful and valuable exercise for consultants. It can help us articulate how we want to use these tools and, more importantly, connect it to our why.
Trust — The Invisible Infrastructure of AI Transformation
published on Center for Creative Leadership
AI is destabilizing the foundations of workplace trust at the exact moment organizations need unprecedented levels of trust to adopt it successfully. True transformation (experimentation, transparency about errors, rapid learning, and willingness to reinvent one’s role) requires deep psychological safety. Yet AI simultaneously threatens people’s professional identity, competence narratives, and job security.
