"Deviance in Disney", an essay about criminal justice ideology

I wrote a chapter in a book about how Disney movies reflect and reinforce the image of crime in the United States.

In Disney movies, the villains are always "born bad"—they're the evil Scars of the world while their brothers are the kind and venerable Mufasas. The villains are usually women or physically darker characters—think Jafar as opposed to Aladdin. In Disney, the only way to get rid of crime is to get rid of the individuals who commit it. 

These stories suggest to kids that someone who commits a crime is a bad person—the criminality resides within them. When in fact, the statistics in the United States show that the greatest predictor of who ends up in prison are the social conditions in which people grow up—poverty and race being the biggest determinants for who is punished for committing crime. If we teach kids that to get rid of crime you have to get rid of criminals, we ignore the very real problems that we should instead focus on—such as economic and racial justice. We also perpetuate the idea that people who have committed crimes will always be “bad,” and cannot be redeemed, thus distracting from rehabilitation.

"DIY Innovation", an article about organizational design

I co-authored an article with an amazing group of organizational experts with deep experience in human-centered design.

We wanted to create a playbook for people in a variety of organizations—middle managers, entrepreneurs, and leaders—to bring principles of innovation into their work to spur positive change and to improve the health and effectiveness of their operations. The article used vignettes to illustrate a successful implementation of each principle, and we included a spider graph exercise for each reader to self-assess their current organization on each principle. The article was published in the Rotman Management magazine, run by Rotman School of Management.