Sasha Parodi

Department: Community Engagement
Email: [email protected]

Biography:

Sasha is passionate about facilitating processes and spaces in which people can thrive as their full selves. In her work at MAPC Sasha has prioritized efforts to establish systems or practices that would better support community members in participating in public process, especially for BIPOC, low-income, immigrant, queer and every other community historically excluded from and marginalized by those processes. Sasha believes this type of change is achieved through meaningful relationship building, shifting power in decision-making structures, consistently meeting people where they are at, designing engagement that is fun, creative and reciprocal (rather than extractive) and supporting people’s capacity to participate through adaptive and accessible strategies.

Sasha joined MAPC in 2019 as an Event Planner. In this role Sasha led the development of MAPC’s event strategy best practices and contributed to hosting over 50 events at the agency. In her time at MAPC Sasha has contributed to the development of and engagement strategy for MetroCommon 2050, MAPC’s long range regional plan and the establishment of new practices, including: remote meeting best practices, hybrid meeting design and language access. In her current role Sasha oversees the workload management and project development for the Community Engagement team, along with supporting Community Engagement Team Members. Sasha also helps lead the Subregional Program, setting its strategic direction and supporting MAPC’s Subregional Coordinators in managing their respective Subregions.

Prior to joining MAPC, Sasha worked for the Chelsea Collaborative, where she coordinated professional and leadership development programming for young people (aged 14-18). This included supporting youth in obtaining internship opportunities, developing professional development trainings, and conducting ongoing case management and individual support for each young person in her program. Sasha graduated from Boston University in 2017 with a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Journalism. In her spare time you can find her dancing, volunteering in her community, or on a walk with a friend.

Areas of Expertise: Community Engagement Design; Language Access; Facilitation; Hybrid Engagement Strategies & Shared Practices; Event planning (logistics, timeline, agenda development, coordination, coordination between stakeholders and groups); Remote Meeting Shared Practices; Designing engagement with young people.

Areas of Interest: Racial equity and building anti-racism practices into planning and engagement;
Asynchronous engagement; Multimedia engagement; Relationship-building and creative space-making in event planning; Expanding access points for public participation; Community civic leadership and capacity development; Partnership with community based organizations.