April 2022 – Following a nationwide search, Annie Phoenix, Ph.D., has been selected as the new executive director of the Jesuit Social Research Institute (JSRI), based at Loyola University New Orleans. She began with JSRI on April 1.
Dr. Phoenix specializes in supporting social justice organizations to identify needs, design programs and secure funding. Before joining JSRI this month, she was the founder and lead consultant at Rosewater Advisors, where she offered partnership support, training, coaching and fundraising services. She previously served as co-founder and development director of Operation Restoration, a non-profit organization that supports currently and formerly incarcerated women. She led efforts to establish a College in Prison program in partnership with Tulane University’s School of Professional Advancement, and she is an experienced advocate who has written and helped pass multiple laws in Louisiana.
Dr. Phoenix is passionate about JSRI’s Catholic, faith-centered mission. She has worked closely with Catholic Charities in the Archdiocese of New Orleans and the St. Vincent de Paul Society.
Dr. Phoenix completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at Tulane University’s City, Culture, and Community Program in 2021. Her dissertation was a critical policy analysis of efforts to remove criminal history questions from college applications in five states.
JSRI was founded in 2007 as a collaboration between the Jesuits USA Central and Southern Province and Loyola University New Orleans to transform the Gulf South through action research, analysis, education and advocacy on the core issues of poverty, race, and migration through the lens of Catholic Social Teaching. Beginning next year, as part of an organizational restructuring, JSRI will focus on issues related to the criminal legal system, especially in Louisiana. JSRI will coordinate stipend-funded faculty workgroups to examine criminal legal system issues such as immigrant detention, prison and jail conditions and reentry.
– Based on an announcement to faculty by Tanuja Singh, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Loyola University New Orleans