Kalisha Dessources

Observer
Science Haven
The moment that I reflected on the most on my time on Saturday was just a pull-aside conversation that I had with Dottie Green and realizing the many, many connections we had just around the work she's been doing for decades and work that I'm interested in researching and doing policy work around. It turns out that Dottie was a principal in several jails and correctional facilities across the state of Connecticut. So it's like the exact nexus of a lot of the research I do around the criminal juvenile justice system around the education system. So I just remember having that conversation with her wanting to connect with her afterwards, and then just spending a lot of time just reflecting on this conflict between who does sort of this broader scale programming and policy on the institutional level or on the national level, on the government level. I just thought a lot about how much of an expert somebody like a Dottie Green was, and all the time she has spent in jails and correctional facilities, and her time spent in middle and high schools and then as a principal within these facilities and how much she's an expert on the change that needs to happen, whether it's in education or whether it's in different systems reform, and just thinking about different rooms that I've been in with policymakers and in government where nobody has that expertise that Dottie has.