Amitis Oskoui

Elevating the unique role, strengths, and capacities of our partners to drive social change

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”—Alice Walker

Amitis employs skills in strategy, analysis, evaluation, and communications to help partners recognize their own exceptional capabilities that differentiate them and their ability to drive powerful and sustainable impact.

Amitis is driven by her belief in the basic moral responsibility of all humans to one another, and works with clients across a wide range of sectors to most effectively advance and preserve the common understanding of social good. She is committed to helping various stakeholders become better, stronger actors in their field, so they are best positioned to ultimately achieve equity for all.

She has extensive experience in inclusive and innovative approaches to strategic design and implementation and is committed to improving economic development, opportunity, and social justice through her work.

At TCC Group:

• ascena retail group, inc.: As a strategist and researcher, Amitis supports a visioning process with ascena leadership to better align its overarching youth and female empowerment pillars with its brands. Amitis also supports the client in the administration and management of the Roslyn S. Jaffe Awards, which provides funding to organizations working to strengthen women and children’s education, health, self-esteem, and leadership. In this role, she supports the development of external communications materials and grant applications, and provides guidance throughout the grantee selection process.
• Bard Prison Initiative (BPI): Amitis co-leads strategic planning efforts for the groundbreaking organization, the Bard Prison Initiative, which has provided an ambitious and rigorous college education to those within America’s prison systems for the past twenty years. During the course of this engagement, Amitis has helped BPI develop its strategic priorities and implement a five-year strategic plan that will help the organization improve and codify its work, strengthening its position as a national model for higher education. In close collaboration with BPI’s leadership, she designs and directs the research, analysis, and strategy needed to capitalize on BPI’s well-established presence in New York and pivot toward its future as a model for college nationally.
• National Audubon Society: Focused on building the capacity of Audubon’s chapters nationwide over several years, Amitis and the TCC team provide ongoing support and guidance to the Audubon community. In addition to conducting a series of interviews, she applied her creativity and hands-on understanding of needs to help define actionable ways to mobilize chapters, giving volunteers valuable resources to provide much-needed education on the inextricable link between people and wildlife. She developed toolkits, templates, and an interactive workshop for the National Audubon Society’s National Convention in Park City, Utah. Amitis is actively working on capacity-building efforts to support the outreach, including a new series of webinars and workshops focused on strategic thinking, volunteerism, and community engagement.

Before TCC Group:

• School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University: In a joint research project between Princeton University and Columbia University, Amitis helped advance two prominent economists’ inquiry into the effects of de-unionization on economic inequality in the United States. She applied strategic thinking to transform the microdata into frameable evidence that was published in a leading academic journal, and championed by its authors to influence academic rhetoric and ultimately, key policy decisions that could restore the nation’s labor protections.
• International Labour Organization: Amitis worked as a consultant to conduct a formative evaluation of a Workers’ Center in an industrial (garment factory) zone in a remote area of Jordan. She designed research protocols that enabled her to tactfully conduct focus groups with migrant garment workers to assess the impact and effectiveness of the Center. The research analysis revealed aspirations of migrant workers and resulted in the Center increasing its focus on a highly valued service—skills-based training, with emphasis on the English language and computer skills. The courses proved essential to fulfilling the Center’s mission of equipping workers with the skills they need to gain a greater sense of dignity and self-confidence.

Education:

• Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs
  • MIA, Economic Development and Policy Analysis
• University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)
  • BA, Communication Studies, Political and Legal Communication