Please join #AltAc’s meet and greet with its next rock star:
Elevating Respect & Partnership with the World of Practice with Dr. David Pitts
Expertise is born from experience and experiences come from so many people – scholars, advocates, individuals impacted by systems, and practitioners. Working in AltAc spaces often means understanding, respecting, and partnering with the experience of people beyond academia. Join Dr. David Pitts as he pulls back the curtain on policy and technical assistance work, shares how we can move into these high-impact spaces, and reminds us all about the importance of elevating varied expertise.
Keywords: Think tank, soft money, practitioner relationships, correctional research, policy,
technical assistance
Dr. David Pitts
Interim Associate Vice President & Senior Research Fellow
Justice Policy Center
Urban Institute
Dr. David Pitts is a senior research fellow in the Justice Policy Center and director of the Prison Research and Innovation Initiative, a multiyear project that leverages research to promote transparency, innovation, and well-being in US prisons. Pitts uses evidence-based strategies to promote prison reform that benefits both incarcerated people and correctional staff, and toward that end, he has partnered with an array of advocacy organizations, nonprofit service providers, and departments of corrections. His work has addressed a variety of topics in this area, including restrictive housing, prison education, visitation, and correctional staff well-being.
In addition to his criminal legal system research, Pitts has written extensively on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion in public policy. He has consulted for government organizations at all levels, from small cities to federal agencies, and has taught a variety of courses to graduate students in public policy and criminal justice programs. He is currently an adjunct professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, and he spent a decade in academia as a tenure-track and tenured professor prior to his work in applied criminal legal research.
A native of Birmingham, Alabama, Pitts earned a bachelor’s degree from Birmingham-Southern
College; master’s degrees from Indiana University and the University of California, Irvine; and a
PhD from the University of Georgia.
Meeting Resources
AltAc Rockstar Dr. David Pitts Recording
Please join #AltAc’s meet and greet with its next rock star:
There’s No Need to Choose, Playing in All the Sandboxes with Dr. Jennifer Peirce
Dr. Peirce has done it all – and we mean all. She’s worked in government, multilateral, academic, and nonprofit organizations. And, she has a tip: you, too, can do it all. Join Dr. Peirce as she talks about her journey as a writer, researcher, and human rights activist, and offers a few hot takes for graduate students who might be interested in taking the (more lucrative) road less traveled.
Keywords: Non-profit research, think tank, consulting, international work, soft money
Dr. Jen Peirce
Senior Research Associate
Vera Institute of Justice
Dr. Jennifer Peirce is a senior research associate at the Vera Institute of Justice, where she leads mixed-methods research on ways to reduce criminalization and the use of jails, especially at the local/county level. She is also a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Toronto. Jennifer completed her PhD in criminal justice at John Jay College / the CUNY Graduate Center in 2021. Her dissertation analyzed incarcerated people’s perceptions of prison reforms and conditions in the Dominican Republic. Previously, Jennifer worked for over a decade in the international development sector, with NGOs in Central America, the Canadian foreign ministry, and the Inter-American Development Bank, mainly on human rights, crime, and violence issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. She has continued to work as a part-time consultant in this field and is a co-founder of the Americas Prisons Research Network. Jennifer’s writing appears in academic journals, policy reports, and media outlets, including Foreign Affairs and Insight Crime.
Meeting Resources
Alt Ac Rockstar Jen Peirce Recording
https://beyondprof.com/how-to-write-a-resume-when-you-have-an-academic-cv/
https://www.vera.org/downloads/publications/a-technical-guide-to-jail-data-analysis-report.pdf
Please join #AltAc’s meet and greet with its next rock star:
Helping You Do You & Finding Professional Freedom with Dr. Sarah Trocchio
Sometimes you just can’t fit a square peg in a round hole. And, it’s time we stop trying. Dr. Sarah Trocchio, founder and owner of the Square Peg Club, LLC and career coach, is here to tell you it’s time you do you. This means no longer waiting for permission and, instead, harnessing your own power to make radical life-changing career choices. Join us as Dr. Trocchio talks about why we’ve leaned so heavily and naturally into permission structures in the academy, and how we can get ourselves out and find professional freedom.
Keywords: Career Coaching, transitioning careers
Dr. Sarah Trocchio, MSW, PhD, BCC
Board Certified Coach & Consultant
Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology, Rider University
strocchio@thesquarepegclub.com
Sarah Trocchio (she/her/hers), MSW, PhD, is the proud founder and owner of the “Square Peg Club, LLC,” a career coaching & strategy firm for badass academics of all stripes looking to stir shit up in their careers. With nearly two decades of experience as an intersectional inequity scholar, social worker, and educator, Sarah channels all of that curiosity and a honed advocacy tool kit to serve academics at critical professional junctures to bravely start their Next First Thing (NFT). She obtained her MSW from Boston University in 2011, her PhD in Criminal Justice from Rutgers-Newark in 2019, and became nationally board certified as a coach through the Center for Credentialing Education (CCE) in 2022. In addition to helping academics get real about their core values and how they can best be activated to prompt greater professional freedom & fulfillment, Sarah is an Assistant Professor of Sociology & Criminology at Rider University.