Amelia Krysinski is a project manager with the National Implementation Research Network (NIRN) at the UNC Frank Porter Graham Child Development Institute (FPG). She has experience in project management, coordinating participants and data collection for research studies, event planning, and providing technical assistance to support the use of an online data system for collection of organizational capacity and fidelity data.

As part of our FPG profile series, we recently spoke with Krysinski to learn more about her work at FPG. Here’s what she had to say.

Tell us a bit about your professional journey―and what brought you to FPG?

I’ve been at UNC for my entire career. I began as a Program Assistant for a handful of academic programs at UNC’s School of Education. When I was ready for something new, I came to FPG to work as the project coordinator for the Targeted Reading Intervention (TRI) under Lynne Vernon-Feagans, PhD, with whom I had been working at the School of Education. After a few years supporting TRI and then supporting the Family Life Project longitudinal study, I joined NIRN in 2016.

What do you do—describe your job, walk us through a typical day, and tell us about the projects you're currently working on.

I am a project manager with NIRN, supporting the overall functioning of NIRN as a center and currently working on two projects. One is the State Implementation and Scaling-up of Evidence-based Practices (SISEP) Technical Assistance Center. The SISEP Center helps state education agencies use implementation science to select, adopt, and sustain evidence-based practices to improve outcomes for all k-12 students; it also supports the development of an educator workforce that is prepared to apply implementation science within their work. The other project I support is a validation study of the rubric used by Rivet Education to assess professional learning organizations applying to be listed in Rivet’s Professional Learning Partner Guide. On a typical day I can be found managing tasks and timelines, helping PIs track budgets, supporting collection and basic analysis of data, copy editing, assisting users with an online data system, planning event logistics, and more.

What do you like most about your job?

Our wonderful NIRN team! I am so fortunate to work with a great group of colleagues who are bright, kind, collaborative, passionate, creative, and supportive of each other. We work hard together, and we have fun together too.

What do you find most challenging?

I’m detail oriented and I prefer to focus deeply on one thing at a time, so the wide-ranging nature of my role and the variance in tasks and priorities from day to day and across projects can be challenging!

How does your work further the mission of FPG?

As a project manager supporting the provision of implementation science-based technical assistance and research, the immediate impacts of my work are on my team members and our partners. My colleagues support our partners in effectively implementing evidence-based practices, and those evidence-based practices ultimately can transform the lives of children.

What do you hope to have accomplished five years from now?

I hope to still be doing work that in some way helps improve the lives of others.