I always knew I wanted to Do More Good, but I never thought grant writing was going to be part of the picture for me. I spent more than a decade in helping fields first - classrooms, addiction treatment, community health. Direct service, mostly. The kind of work where you carry other people's hardest days home with you.

Then I found my way into veterans services and got voluntold into grant writing. Somewhat annoyingly, I turned out to be weirdly good at it. No training, no documentation, nobody left to show me what to do. So I taught myself, and over the next 18 months I bootstrapped and white-knuckled a grants department back together, got promoted to grants manager, and ended up with two people working under me.

Here's the part that took me years to understand: the whole time, I was convinced I was the problem. That

I was just bad at my job. I wasn't. I was doing several people's work with next to no support or resources.That's why I talk about capacity as a frontline staff advocacy issue now. Not just a burnout prevention or organizational wellness topic. It's the actual reason good people leave this work.

I rebuilt that first grants program from nothing.

Later, I helped design and pilot a Proposal Review service from scratch - until it became a formal offering at the firm.

I’ve done it again as an in-house grant manager. I built a custom grant management system that pulled the organization’s entire grants portfolio into one place so the work lives in a dedicated system instead of in my memory.

Three different situations. Same instinct.

I notice what's missing. I figure out how the pieces are supposed to fit together. Then I build something people can actually use - even after I leave.

I keep First Light Grants small on purpose. Today I work in-house as a grant manager at a supportive housing nonprofit in New York City, and I take on a small number of consulting projects - the ones that are a genuinely strong fit and light me up.

So when you hire me, you get me. I'm in the meetings, I know the strategy, and I write the words. 

On a large project, or during my busiest stretches, I may bring in a trusted subcontractor to help carry your project across the finish line. What I won't do is hand you off and vanish into thin air - I want to see you succeed! If I'm telling nonprofit professionals that capacity matters, mine has to matter too. I know from experience what happens when it doesn't.

When I’m not chasing deadlines or talking into a microphone, I’m usually dancing at a loud concert, experimenting with a new recipe, or negotiating over treats with my French bulldog, Mando.

Let’s Do More Good together.

“From our first conversation, I could tell she was knowledgeable, thoughtful, and someone I could learn from.”
— Ashley Feit, Founder, Thrive Grant Service