I am a researcher, educator and advocate working at the intersection of leadership, technology, and product while working on my Ph.D. in Educational Studies at Lesley University. One of my personal and academic goals is to discover new avenues and tools to tackle challenges that severely affect individuals and society at large by applying Hannah Arendt’s work to product and technology. My aim is to make the world a better place. I believe that awareness leads to empathy, that empathy leads to action, and that action can be coupled with today’s technological resources to result in social change. Before my studies at Lesley, I attended The Longy School of Music of Bard College where I completed a Masters degree in Vocal Performance. Today, I integrate music to my presentations as an interdisciplinary method to illustrate concepts and ideas in a wide array of fields including leadership, capabilites, and more. My name Xochitl means flower in the Náhuatl (Aztec) language.

Check out my article titled Re-Imagining Work in the Post-Pandemic Era: An Arendtian Lens published by Harvard Law School’s Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law Policy, Biotechnology, and Bioethics. I am honored to be featured by this prestigious research center in their most recent digital symposium!

Harnessing the power of interdisciplinarity to break boundaries, I like to use music as a powerful pedagogical tool to convey concepts in the fields of leadership, capabilities, and more to make surprising yet effective connections. The science of how we learn has shown that diverse domains–including music and the arts–can provide special ways for our brain to make knowledge. In certain instances, I find that music can help bring to the fore ways of understanding that are not available using words only. This coming September, I will use music to shed light to important concepts as part of my talk “In Between Worlds” at the Human Development and Capabilities Association Conference to be held in Antwerp, Belgium.

I’ve loved singing and performing for as long as I can remember. Personally and professionally, I believe that singing has influenced me in very deep ways, strongly shaping who I am. My favorite part of singing is the feeling of joy and self-expression as I open a whole new dimension of communication with an audience.  I completed an undergraduate in Vocal Performance at Longy School of Music of Bard College and later a Masters of Music also at Longy.