Marie Fielder Fellows

Hi folks - this site looks wonderful! I’m so happy to be here. Recently, I’ve spent time mostly creating alignment between my core areas of work and research at Fielding this term: (i) the Fielder Fellowship; (ii) the dissertation seminar (where I am developing the concept paper); (iii) SPCL (Somatics, Phenomenology, and Communicative Leadership) where I am a student anchor this year. My overarching goal is to use each of these areas to inspire, inform, and help socialize my thinking as I move more concretely into the actual dissertation in 2026. All of our plates are full, so I want to make sure there is clear alignment among all my activities this term, our Fellowship included. 

With that said, I have been focused on the following over the past few weeks:

1. Aligning my concept paper (in the Dissertation seminar) with my Fielder project. In my project, Reclaiming Leadership: Strengthening Black Women’s Retention in Nonprofits, I hope to address the leadership gap of Black women execs in the nonprofit sector by examining their lived experiences leaving the sector. My dissertation will be a phenomenological study of the experience of resilience among Black women nonprofit execs who have been terminated from their job. I see the project and my dissertation study informing one another with the concept paper helping me develop a strong foundation for the research design. Alignment early on is important.
   

2. I’m also starting to flesh out the research design for my Fielder Fellow project, which will include semi-structured interviews and a focus group. SPCL is a "testing ground" for me to socialize some of my ideas and thinking around this.
   

So far, this has been creative and strategic at the same time, which I am enjoying. It is also helpful to see how others are approaching these early steps. I look forward to digging in more with others and being a support. Thx!