About Dr. Alicen
I am a scholar activist, organizer, and consultant to businesses, organizations and individuals focused on increasing effectiveness by achieving transparency and accountability in bureaucracies, whether in the public or private sector. Following a first career as a television producer/director, I went back to grad school in psychology and spent 20 years in private practice.
My doctoral dissertation provided academic grounding and credibility for a citizen movement seeking bureaucratic reform of child protective services in Vermont. That effort was successful in good part, and the experience that unfolded in the years following was as nightmarish and as Kafkaesque as The Trial. When one connects all the dots, the picture that emerges is that the bureaucrats who were embarrassed by the reform movement’s success exacted political payback by tying me up in the bureaucracy for several years. I prevailed legally but was devastated financially by the effort, and that experience was the precipitating event leading to the establishment of BureaucracyBlog.
I've been and done many things. Here are some of the biographical basics:
I am a Tar Heel, having grown up in Charlotte and gotten my bachelors from UNC-Chapel Hill. I then spent six years in Nebraska in the late 70's to mid-80's. There I was thoroughly spoiled by a rare and wonderful bureaucratic administrator named Dr. Jason Andrew. The reason that piece of information is pertinent is that Jason ran Nebraska Vocational Rehabilitation the way I believe a bureaucracy ought to be run, which is the way too few operate. Having experienced a very professional bureaucracy informs my analysis and writing about bureaucracies on BureaucracyBlog.
From Nebraska I moved to Vermont in 1984 and have been here ever since. I earned my master's degree from Goddard College and my doctorate from Union Institute, both in counseling psychology. The latter also incorporated research into organizational structures and psychology. As part of my private pratice I had occasion to consult and do training with several organizations around team building, values clarification, and designing policies and procedures to improve operations and and all of an organization's bottom lines: people served, efficiency, and profit.
Whatever my work has focused on, it has always in some way or other had to do with justice, and it's a privilege to work with others who are also dedicated to making things better for others as well as ourselves.