Core Team 2023-2024

We continually welcome core contributors – please contact us if interested…

To get involved, reach out to Angela:  info@urbanct.org

To sign up for updates and events, contact Erin: connecticut@urbanresearchnetwork.org

Angela is principal and founder of Knowledge Designs to Change, a strategic research and knowledge practice dedicated to supporting social change efforts. As an engaged socio-political scholar, Angela brings more than twenty years of experience working in qualitative inquiry across nonprofit, academic, and philanthropic sectors and in community, state, and national arenas.

Angela is committed to advancing equity and supporting individuals and organizations in reaching their full potential. She believes in the power of the social sector to influence larger systemic change and has an enduring curiosity for how groups and communities activate equity through a shared voice and how funded change efforts inform and influence social, institutional, and policy action.

Angela was born and raised in Bridgeport, Connecticut and attended Bridgeport public schools and the University of Bridgeport before going on to earn Masters and Doctorate degrees with a focus on urban planning.  Her favorite Bridgeport memories include summer outings at Beardsley and Seaside Parks. Today, Angela lives in Orange with her spouse and feline fur-babies. 

Dan is a grants management professional who is currently a member of the team at Borealis Philanthropy, a social justice grantmaking institution focused on resourcing grassroots leaders and social justice movements for transformative change. Among his many duties, he works to collect and retain institutional knowledge key to the organization’s grantee constituent success.

Dan has dedicated his career to working at and supporting nonprofit and philanthropic institutions for over thirteen years, ensuring their infrastructures are built with an eye towards equity and social justice. As the nonprofit/philanthropic sector has taken on a larger role in our society, he is interested in how the organizations that comprise it interact with the communities they serve and how their internal structures can be reinforced to provide fulfilling experiences for staff and volunteers.

Dan was born and raised in Stamford, CT, where he spent plenty of time enjoying all four seasons at Cummings and Cove Island Parks and meandering around the Stamford Town Center as a teenager. He earned a bachelor’s from Providence College and a master’s in Public Service Management from DePaul University.

Dan lives in Norwalk with his spouse and two cats.

Having spent the last two decades as a practitioner working in a variety of early care and education settings, Dr. Kenney’s interdisciplinary work includes time as an early childhood teacher, administrator, professor, and researcher. Engaged in both qualitative and quantitative research methods, her published dissertation work ‘How would you describe grandpa? Mothers’ personal intelligence predicts personality talk with their children,’ included a critical examination of parent/child conversation at the intersection of social psychology, developmental psychology, and early childhood education.

She earned her B.S. from the University of New England and her MEd from the University of Hartford. She earned her MA and PhD in developmental psychology from the University of New Hampshire including a cognate in college teaching. Kenney’s dedication to bridging the gap between developmental science and developmentally appropriate practice includes a commitment to research practices that center participants as knowledge producers and values community engagement.

An Assistant Professor of Psychology at Hartwick College, she also serves as the program development and evaluation fellow for the Center for Montessori Studies at the University of Hartford and is a contributor to national research as URBAN Connecticut’s officer of communications and online presence. Raised in Connecticut and now a frequent visitor to family residents, Dr. Kenney’s commitment to children and families spans multiple CT communities.

John Cusano pursues creative partnerships with organizations that aspire to navigate this century’s cascading and interconnected challenges with mindfulness and empathy.  His approach is informed by the science of self-organizing systems and a commitment to collective learning and meaning making through inquiry and equity.  Co-creative projects are designed to expand awareness and understanding of the intricacies of context, involve a diversity of voices, feedback, and experience to make sense through multiple lenses, assess the influences and effects of current structures and processes, and generate strategic intentions guided by values-wayfinding, purpose, and the desired future.  Activities employ collective processes such as dialogue, individual and group reflection, mapping exercises, three horizons planning, and pluralistic community engagement.

John is deeply invested in Connecticut.  Born in Bridgeport, he served as the Community Development Coordinator at the CT Office of the Arts, Department of Community and Economic Development, where he worked with constituents statewide to design and inaugurate a network of regional service organizations to support and broaden cultural vitality.  Among his many CT projects, he has directed several nonprofit agencies, directed his art gallery as the first tenant in the SoNo redevelopment (South Norwalk), and continues to consult privately for nonprofits and municipalities.  He is a Civic Ambassador with Everyday Democracy and co-designed and -facilitated the ‘Facing Racism in Stamford’ public dialogue series with a team at the Ferguson Library.  He has a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Design and a Master of Arts in Consciousness Studies.

Kara Straun currently serves as the Director of Program & Evaluation at the Community Foundation for Greater New Haven.  Kara has been with the Foundation for over ten years, working to evaluate the impact of the Foundation’s grantmaking and providing management and strategic insight on several programmatic endeavors.  She now also serves as the lead staff person for the Foundation’s Community Fund for Women & Girls and for her it has been a privilege and honor to work on such initiatives as the Girls of Color Mentoring Network and the Pathways to Economic Success for Women grantmaking programs which largely benefit women and girls of color. 

She truly loves what she does and views it as the culmination of a variety of professional and personal experiences rooted in public health, community development, and social justice. Prior to working in her current role, Kara gained experience in the affordable housing and community development sectors.  Kara received her Master of Public Health degree from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health with a concentration in Sociomedical Sciences, Urbanism and Community Health and has remained committed to work that uplifts vulnerable communities through intentional, collective action. 

Director of the Center for Montessori Studies and Associate Professor of Early Childhood Education at the University of Hartford, Connecticut, USA. She has worked with colleagues, allies and accomplices in the community to address systemic inequities for over three decades. Her teaching expertise focuses on the personal “reflexes” and professional identity transitions fostered through dynamic inquiry and the use of meta-cognitive tools with both undergraduate and graduate level pre-service teachers as well as credentialed teachers across the career continuum.  An activist for the rights of children and families, Dr. Bray’s research is grounded by a community context and consistently emphasizes human capacity as knowledge producers as well as knowledge consumers. 

Bray is a National Commissioner for the National Association for the Education of Young Children (USA) and an alumna of the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education Program at Harvard University. She earned her B.A. and M.Ed. from Sarah Lawrence College and her Ed.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Bray integrates her research, theory, and practice through the URBAN network by focusing on public scholarship and holding spaces for creativity and human dignity.

Sousan is a Professor of Educational Leadership & Policy Studies and Director of the Integrated Justice & Social Change Collaborative at Southern Connecticut State University. She is also a founding editor of the Journal of Collaboration for Equitable Change and the Principal of Research Images, an educational research and policy consultancy that has been serving regional, national, and international clients since 2000.

Sousan is interested in the macro (policy, funding efforts, and social structures), the micro (intra- and inter-personal interaction), and how they shape each other into what we experience in our day-to-day lives. Although a long-time qualitative researcher because she loves a good story, she finds herself wading into quantitative and mixed methods territory because those stories are also good. Sousan’s dedication to fostering a more just and equitable society is currently realized through her support of educators who are transitioning into administrative roles and her engagement with community members and organizations striving to elevate their work and impact.

Sousan was born in Middletown, Connecticut to an Arab father and mother with roots in Newfoundland and Massachusetts. Grateful for the gifts of critical and divergent thinking, valuing difference, and embracing ambiguity that her family instilled in her, Sousan has always sought to create connections – whether among people, ideas, disciplines, or technologies. A bit of an “irregular” with an infectious love for life, Sousan believes that one can (and must?) be both serious about the work and find wonder in every person and every moment.