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Dr. Jessica Greenawalt

Predicting Coalition Success and Failure: A 25-Year History of Leader Experience

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“A lot of the success of future coalitions and collaborations is dependent on its leadership. . . [Leaders] act as linchpins for all of these other different predictors that influence the success of a coalition. Ultimately, effective leaders need to be both transactional and transformative.”

Dr. Jessica Greenawalt


In this episode, our guest Dr. Jessica Greenawalt discusses her research examining twenty-five years of coalition leaders’ perceptions of their effectiveness and how time has affected their appraisals of their activity. She describes what she discovered, the implications for current social change efforts, and what constitutes effective leadership of alliances for combined action.

Jessica C. Greenawalt, PhD, LMSW, is the program director of a New York City-based, non-profit organization that serves at-risk youth middle school students through therapeutic, anti-oppressive mentoring. Jessica’s research, publications, and presentations have focused on coalition-building for social change and the influence of gender in community organizing. She has advised graduate social work students in community organizing and taught both undergraduate and graduate students in social work, psychology, and sociology. Jessica received her doctorate from Boston University.

Interviewer: Kathleen Kost, PhD

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