About

Sarah Romano is an engaged educator, researcher, and consultant with 20 years of experience across non-profit, academic, and international field research settings. In both her community and professional work, Sarah has honed skillful training, project management, and group facilitation practices, with an emphasis on collaboration and participatory design towards cultivating equity-centered teams. She practices inclusive methodologies for group discussions and problem-solving, strategic and action planning, and consensus building.

The recipient of two Fulbright awards, Sarah focuses on studying and supporting movements for social and environmental justice. Her work in the U.S. and Central America has drawn together scholarship on environmental governance, social movements, and collective action to examine strategies that politically marginalized groups use to gain inclusion in public decision-making processes. Issues of equity and procedural justice are central to the questions she addresses about rural drinking water in her 2019 book, Transforming Rural Water Governance: The Road From Resource Management to Political Activism in Nicaragua (University of Arizona Press). The results of her field-based research in Nicaragua and the U.S. have also been published in Society and Natural Resources, the International Journal of Water Resources Management, New Political Science, Water International, and the Bulletin of Latin American Research.

Sarah is currently an Associate Professor of Political Science and Global Studies at Lesley University. Sarah received her PhD in Politics and Latin American & Latino Studies from the University of California, Santa Cruz.

Academic & Professional Background

Originally from the San Francisco Bay Area, Sarah earned her B.A. in Spanish and International Affairs at the University of Puget Sound in Tacoma, Washington in 2003.

Prior to starting her academic career, Sarah worked in the non-profit sector in Washington, D.C., and Denver, Colorado.  She interned with the Cuba Project at the Center for International Policy, contributing to the organization of Congressional forums and educational delegations to Cuba.  Subsequently, as a Program Associate with the Institute of Cultural Affairs, Sarah designed and implemented participatory curriculum to promote youth-adult partnerships within nongovernmental organizations based in D.C., New York, Atlanta, and Phoenix.

From 2004-2008, Sarah investigated civil society resistance to water privatization in Managua, Nicaragua. Her report on the Nicaraguan anti-water privatization social movement was published by Public Citizen and Food & Water Watch. She also worked with OMNI Research and Training in Denver, Colorado (2005-2006), as a research assistant for projects in the areas of criminal justice, youth development, and public health.