Leigh brings interdisciplinary experience spanning design, facilitation, and management to their role as Project Manager & Research Consultant, including backbone support for a collective impact initiative, directing the production of public artworks, and convening creatives to create community archives.
Leigh’s career was jump-started at the Democracy at Work Institute, an affiliate of the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. They coordinated the New York City Worker Cooperative Business Development Initiative, one of the largest American municipal efforts to address inequality through worker ownership.
Leigh also helped launch Best for NYC, a partnership between local government and service organisations for guiding local businesses to improve job quality and community impact. Leigh holds an MA from the Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London.
In their own words:
Through my undergraduate studies and early experience, I grew to diagnose and intervene in critical urban issues, drawing from research on systems, social science, ecology, and visual arts. The emphasis on systems stuck, becoming a throughline in my career. The systems change approach Collaborate lends to interventions is a big part of what drew me in.
People who work with me appreciate my ability to see the whole picture, spotting patterns and synthesising. Like my team members, I am oriented both toward infrastructures and also to the needs and capacities of people – and how they shape each other. Every day, I recommit to radical imagination and transformation, to participatory action for greater equity and collective liberation.