Today we’d like to introduce you to Sharon Abramowitz.
Thanks for sharing your story with us Sharon. So, let’s start at the beginning and we can move on from there.
In 2014, I was working as an assistant professor of Anthropology and African Studies at the University of Florida when the West Africa Ebola epidemic broke out. As an expert in medical anthropology, global health, and West African governments, I found an opening to coordinate the Emergency Ebola Anthropology Initiative, to help social scientists around the world respond to the epidemic. Our first efforts were supported by the American Anthropological Association and the Wenner-Gren Foundation, and we were coordinating with colleagues in London, France, Liberia, Guinea, Sierra Leone, Mexico, Germany… everywhere. Our goal was to influence international aid organizations to make the epidemic response more sensitive to the needs, concerns, and capabilities of local African communities.
From this initial venture, I began to receive requests to provide consulting services for humanitarian programs, epidemic and pandemic preparedness programs, and humanitarian and global health evaluations, and we’ve been successfully operating since 2015. The timing for us was lucky. As a young mom with three kids, two of whom have rare low vision disabilities, I was finding that the competing demands of academia and parenting were becoming increasingly incompatible. My husband, Greig Arendt, and I decided that it was time for us to take the dramatic step of leaving Florida, moving in with my family for a while to build out my business, and eventually move to Boston. Brookline-with its great schools and proximity to Perkins School for the Blind and the Carroll Center for the Blind, public transportation, and proximity to Harvard’s resources and libraries-proved to be the perfect place to situate our business.
We’re always bombarded by how great it is to pursue your passion, etc – but we’ve spoken with enough people to know that it’s not always easy. Overall, would you say things have been easy for you?
It’s mostly been a smooth road, in late 2016, it became necessary to pivot from single-issue expertise to a more diverse set of issues. Because of reputational factors, that shift has posed some challenges. But it’s been a positive experience, nonetheless.
So let’s switch gears a bit and go into the Abramowitz and Arendt story. Tell us more about the business.
Abramowitz and Arendt, LLC specializes in providing research, consulting, needs assessment, and evaluation services on global health and humanitarian assistance in the context of global emergencies. Our specialization is helping nonprofits, multilateral organizations, and governments identifying opportunities to empower local communities through structural, communications, outreach, and community engagement and social mobilization. We believe that empowering local communities makes emergency response faster, stronger, and overall better. We are a values-centered organization, and we are particularly proud of our successful efforts to help major stakeholders prioritize a community engagement focus even in some of the most complex humanitarian disasters.
Has luck played a meaningful role in your life and business?
As a specialist in awful mass societal events – wars, pandemics, and disasters – it feels wrong to talk about luck. What I can say personally is this – as the child and grandchild of Holocaust survivors, I was lucky to have a family that raised me to care about the world, and supported my ambitions to make a difference. They instilled in me a stern inability to close my eyes to the worst of the world’s conditions, and morally supported me as I studied, traveled, questioned, and wrote. Without the passion that they cultivated in me, we never would have had the courage to undertake this venture.
Pricing:
- Consulting & Research Services (daily rate): $650/day
- Consulting & Research Services (hourly rate): $100/hour
- Asylum expertise: $500-$1000/case
Contact Info:
- Address: 107 University Rd. Apt. 3
Brookline, MA 02445 - Website: http://www.sharonabramowitz.com
- Phone: 617-599-0191
- Email: saabramowitz@gmail.com
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