Kaitie Chakoian
As the Assistant Director of COMPACT, Kaitie Chakoian leads and implements programs that advance community-engaged pedagogy, research, and service at Brandeis University.
Kaitie brings 20 years of community engaged work to this role - as a direct service provider, volunteer manager, training and technical assistance provider, researcher, and professor. She has worked both in community organizations and in universities to support college students engaging in the community in ways that are intentional, meaningful, community-led, and sustainable. She earned a BA in psychology and social justice from Simmons University (formerly Simmons College), an M.Ed in Higher Education Administration from Northeastern University, and an MA in Social Policy from the Heller School of Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University. She is a current Ph.D candidate at the Heller School where her research focuses on the experiences of college sexual assault survivors navigating the education, healthcare, and criminal-legal systems in the aftermath of violence.
Kaitie's professional experience ranges from volunteer and program management with Girls' LEAP Self-Defense, a small Boston-based non-profit serving gender diverse youth, to campus policy management at End Rape On Campus, a DC-based agency working to end campus sexual violence through direct support for survivors, prevention education, and policy reform, to providing training to community leaders using data to prevent substance use and its consequences with the SouthWest Prevention Center at the University of Oklahoma. Kaitie has also led community-engaged and participatory research projects including the creation of trauma-informed curriculum for providers who support survivors of human trafficking, a storytelling project about the impact of community supports in rural Massachusetts, and an assessment of the economic cost of sexual violence in the state of Ohio.
Kaitie teaches the R/C CLIF Capstone Course that fulfills the requirements of the Community Engaged Scholars Program (CESP 189). She also teaches "HS 309: Policy Approaches to Gender-Based Violence" and "HS 320: LGBTQIA+ Justice" through the Heller School for Social Policy and Management.