TPI Associates

Deborah Loesch-Griffin (see biography below)
Shaun Griffin
Erik Schoen
Laurie Martin

Biography: Deborah Loesch-Griffin

Dr. Deborah Loesch-Griffin was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1955 and was raised and educated in Switzerland and Germany. She returned to the United States in the mid-1960s and continues to travel abroad to develop ties with colleagues in other nations.

Loesch-Griffin received her master’s degree in counseling from California State University, Fullerton in 1978 and earned her doctorate in educational psychology and child development from Stanford University in 1987. She directed the Research and Educational Planning Center in the University of Nevada-Reno School of Education from 1987 to 1990, and she is currently an adjunct faculty member with the Department of Human Development and Family Studies in the College of Health and Human Sciences at UNR.

Loesch-Griffin has twenty years of school and community program development and evaluation experience. She has served in a wide range of positions throughout pre-K-university systems, including as a high school counselor, site administrator, program manager, teacher, professor, and researcher at CSUF, Stanford University and UNR. She maintains strong community ties and working relationships throughout most of these educational positions, working in a part-time or consultant capacity to community-based organizations and non-profits.

She is partnership facilitator for a statewide service-learning initiative coordinated through the private, non-profit Community Chest, Inc. Since 1988 she has worked as a volunteer, board member, and program development director with Community Chest, Inc. to develop community organizations, programs, and projects in her local town of Virginia City, Nevada, such as:

• Storey County Preschool and Child Care Center (founding organizer and board member, 1988-1993).

• AmeriCorps*VISTA after school programs and support services for families and children (supervisor of volunteers for the development of the program, 1990-1995).

• Storey County Community Council, an advisory group providing input and direction for funding and programming for county residents (founder, 1995).

• Community Center Project, countywide door-to-door census and needs-assessment projects to identify community priorities for projects and funding (organizer and facilitator, 1995-2000).

In 1998 she entered a partnership with UNR to co-sponsor the Center for Partnership Evaluation in the College of Health and Human Sciences. There she began training and mentoring individuals interested in becoming professional evaluators.

Most recently she has been working on the development and evaluation of programs that focus on educational reform and integrated service delivery, working collaboratives, school and community partnerships, youth development, and service learning. She has performed statewide evaluations of School to Careers, Nevada's K-12 Learn and Serve programs, and has completed a six-year national Head Start/Public School Early Childhood Transition Demonstration Project study.

Loesch-Griffin has also served as the director and evaluation consultant for regional service-learning evaluations through the Points of Light Foundation’s California’s Communities as Places of Learning project, East Bay Conservation Corps's Project YES (Youth Engaged in Service), AmeriCorps, Summer of Service, and Charter School Programs, and she has served on CalServe’s statewide evaluation advisory team.

She was the primary facilitator for the Pinon Service Project, a Northern Nevada coalition comprised of sixteen partners. This project involved AmeriCorps members from higher education working in local schools and communities in four counties to implement service-learning from 1994-2000. This partnership evolved into the Nevada Service-Learning Partnership (NSLP), for which Dr. Loesch-Griffin wrote and received funding for three years on behalf of the partnership as one of 20 national projects to facilitate and evaluate a statewide service-learning initiative.

On a personal note, Loesch-Griffin views the world as her home and continues to learn from, reach out to, and serve the people of this planet. In 2002, she left with her family on a self-imposed six-month "victory lap" to renew and reframe her lifework. Upon return, she co-founded Global Voice with her sons and daughter and also continued to explore more deeply the religious, cultural, and national divisions that mark the twenty-first century. She believes that she must work to "think differently" about the world, to continue to see it as a place of forgiveness, hope, and light, and to put the four agreements into practice.

www.turningpointnevada.com

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