Board of Directors

Rebecca Otten

  • Rebecca Otten is a Professor of Practice and the Director of Strategy & Engagement at the Taylor Center. In this role, she facilitates the Taylor Center’s field leadership, campus and community partnerships, and program assessment.

    Otten, as part of the founding team that introduced social innovation education to Tulane in 2009, launched and has continued to influence its co-curricular and curricular offerings over the last decade. Otten incorporates her diverse interests in youth development, systems theory, and social impact in higher education, examining the ways in which communities and structures can encourage inclusion and equity.

    Otten teaches “SISE 2010: Introduction to Social Innovation and Social Entrepreneurship." Her current research explores a dynamic, long-term partnership between the Taylor Center and Grow Dat Youth Farm. 

    Otten is a Change Leader with the Ashoka U Changemaker Campus Consortium and served as Network Advisory Committee Leadership in 2018-2020. She was previously awarded the Spirit of Tulane Award (2019), awarded to exemplary faculty and staff that exemplify the mission of Tulane, and the Josephine Louise Award (2010) awarded by the Newcomb Senate for outstanding contributions benefiting the Newcomb student body.

    Otten holds a BS in Anthropology, BSM in Management, and master’s in public health from Tulane University.

    Pronouns: she/her

Clara Kreutziger

  • Clara is a current second-year student studying marine biology at the University of Washington, Seattle Interdisciplinary Honors College. There, she works within the Dean’s office of the UW College of the Environment in addition to serving on the Student Advisory Council. After moving to New Orleans from New York City in 2019, she graduated from Benjamin Franklin High School with Summa Cum Laude in 2022. Throughout her four years working at Grow Dat, she has been a VISIONS facilitator, memorial garden construction and management intern, Assistant Crew Leader in the Leadership Program, Assistant Crew Leader in the SEED Project program, and a crew member.

    Pronouns: she/her

Kristen Rome

  • Kristen is the Executive Director of Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights—a nonprofit law office that defends and advocates for incarcerated youth throughout the state of Louisiana. Born and raised in New Orleans, Kristen has over a decade of social and criminal justice experience, with a specific focus on youth justice.

    Prior to joining LCCR, Kristen was a partner at Rome, Butler, and Rome where she practiced criminal defense in Louisiana. In addition to her work as an attorney, Kristen spent time in Shanghai, China teaching U.S. Constitutional Law at Shanghai International Studies University. 

    Kristen holds a BA in Political Science from Spelman College in Atlanta, Georgia, an English Law Certificate from The London School of Economics and Political Science in London, England and a Juris Doctor from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law. She is a certified holistic doula and uses her birthwork to inform how she helps Louisiana families navigate interwoven systems that - from conception - define young people’s life outcomes.

Audrey Stewart

  • Audrey Stewart is an advocate, educator, birth worker and mother. Originally from Mississippi, she has lived in New Orleans for more than a decade. Over the past 15 years, she has advocated for a just hurricane recovery; led a variety of criminal justice, educational equity, and reproductive justice initiatives; and supported dozens of birthing families as a perinatal health and breastfeeding advocate, doula, and student midwife. Audrey is an abolitionist. She serves as a faculty member on the Louisiana Perinatal Quality Collaborative and is a member of the Healthy Moms Healthy Babies Advisory Council. She is the former co-editor of the New Orleans Parents Guide to Public Schools and served as the interim local director at the New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice. She is the former advocacy director for the ACLU of Louisiana. Audrey is passionate about building a world where all families can birth safely and with dignity.

    Pronouns: she/her

Alex Torres

  • Dr. Alex Torres brings over a decade of experience advancing culturally sustaining and healing-centered education across public schools and higher education in the Deep South. As a former English Learner teacher working with undocumented students, she organized alongside teachers, youth, and community partners to expand resources and support. Her doctoral research at LSU used ethnographic methods to explore the educational needs of undocumented English Learners through a framework of desire and resiliency.

    Alex helped co-found the Baton Rouge Immigrant Rights Coalition, collaborated closely with the Louisiana Organization for Refugees and Immigrants, and served as the inaugural Latinx Director at Louisiana State University. She is also a co-founder of the educational justice nonprofit Humanities Amped, where she serves as an advisor for the Adelante Leadership Program. In addition, Alex is the Residencies Coordinator at the Windcall Institute, supporting transformative rest retreats for organizers, and works as a certified professional coach and research consultant with the Amped Institute.

    Born in Mexico City and raised undocumented in rural Mississippi, Alex has called South Louisiana home since 2014. She believes deeply in the power of young people, intergenerational relationship-building, and the understanding that personal healing is inseparable from collective liberation.

Erin Greenwald

  • Erin Greenwald is vice president of public programs and editor in chief of 64 Parishes magazine and website at the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities (LEH). As a historian with deep roots in the public humanities, Greenwald is dedicated to exploring and sharing Louisiana stories. She has fifteen years of experience working for humanities-based nonprofits, including the LEH, New Orleans Museum of Art, and Historic New Orleans Collection, and has published and lectured widely on the histories of New Orleans and the international and domestic slave trades. In 2015 she curated the exhibition Purchased Lives: New Orleans and the Domestic Slave Trade, 1808–1865, which later traveled the country thanks to a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Greenwald’s work in this area has contributed to ongoing conversations about history and memory in New Orleans. In 2018 she led an initiative that saw the addition of five historic markers testifying to New Orleans’s involvement in the American slave trade on properties in the French Quarter, CBD, and Faubourg Marigny. And in 2022 she was part of a diverse coalition of alumni, parents, students, teachers, and community members that succeeded in pushing for the renaming of Lusher Charter School, a public school in Orleans Parish named for Confederate tax collector and ardent white supremacist Robert Mills Lusher.

    As the proud parent of a Grow Dat alumni, Greenwald has seen firsthand the power of the Grow Dat program to build compassion and understanding across boundaries in a city where many schools and extracurricular activities remain deeply and historically stratified by race and class. 

    Greenwald holds a PhD in American history from The Ohio State University.

    Pronouns: she/her

Dana Blandin

  • Dana Blandin is the Deputy Director of the Louisiana Bucket Brigade, bringing over a decade of experience working with organizations to develop and manage operational processes. Dana moved to New Orleans in 2017 after being drawn to the passion and potential of the New Orleans entrepreneurial community and has played a role in supporting growing businesses ever since. She is a founding member of Growhaus Studio, a digital marketing and design company, where she also held the title of Director of Business Operations for six years. Dana holds a BA in Organizational Management and Business Law, from the University of Miami, School of Business and is a SHRM-Senior Certified Professional specializing in HR practices. She is an avid lover of food, the outdoors, cooking with friends, and her garden. Dana is looking forward to bringing her passion for food systems and food access into her role as a board member at Grow Dat.

    Pronouns: she/her

Lavonzelle Nicholson

  • Bio coming soon!