Skip to main content

Angela K. Frusciante, PhD – Principal

Knowledge creation is the essential energy of all social change. Knowledge Designs to Change partners to strengthen knowledge efforts as a key strategy for ensuring equity in change work.

Angela K. Frusciante, MRP, PhD, is principal and founder of Knowledge Designs to Change, a strategic research and knowledge practice focused on change efforts. As an engaged socio-political scholar, Angela brings more than twenty years of experience working in qualitative inquiry and evaluation across the community, nonprofit, academic, and philanthropic sectors and in local, state, and national arenas. She is dedicated to advancing equity and supporting individuals and organizations in reaching their full potential.   Angela believes in the power of the social sector to influence larger systemic change and has an enduring curiosity for how groups and communities activate equity through a shared voice and how funded change efforts inform and influence social, institutional, and policy action.

Angela is a vetted member of the National Coalition of Independent Scholars and serves as chair of URBAN Connecticut, and planning team member of the national Urban Research Based Action Network. She is a founding partner of the University of Hartford’s Initiative for Civic Design and Public Work, an effort to promote and nurture civic engagement and action. She is an alumnus of the Council on Foundations Career Pathways program for leaders in philanthropy and has served, since its founding, as a reviewer for The Foundation Review, the first peer-reviewed journal of philanthropy. Angela is founding co-editor of the soon-to-launch Journal of Collaboration for Equitable Change.

Before founding Knowledge Designs to Change, Angela worked as the first “knowledge development officer” in Connecticut philanthropy. In this role, she created and managed grant and contract investments related to organizational learning, management systems, program support, and network learning partnerships and research. She established the foundation’s statewide university learning partnerships to support engaged research leading to increased opportunity and equity for children across Connecticut and began a network of equity scholars.

Prior to that, Angela served on the faculty of Jackson State University, an HBCU in Mississippi where she coordinated the Urban Planning Department’s Urban Studies undergraduate redesign and took part in the department’s first accreditation of the Master’s program and also the University’s transition to a research institution.  Angela builds her current work on these experiences and her ten years in the Washington DC metro area working in multiple arenas including social contexts of education, community engagement and development, university-community partnerships, and foundation funded change efforts.

Angela holds a Doctor of Philosophy in Education Policy, Planning, and Administration from the University of Maryland in College Park, a Masters in Regional Planning from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and earned her Bachelor of Science from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut.

Angela K. Frusciante curriculum vitae

Click here for a history of past presentations.

Short bio

Angela K Frusciante, MRP, PhD, is principal and founder of Knowledge Designs to Change, a strategic research and knowledge practice focused on change efforts. As an engaged socio-political scholar, Angela brings more than twenty years of experience working in qualitative inquiry and evaluation across the community, nonprofit, academic, and philanthropic sectors and in local, state, and national arenas.

Angela is dedicated to advancing equity and supporting individuals and organizations in reaching their full potential. She believes in the power of the social sector to influence larger systemic change and has an enduring curiosity for how groups and communities activate equity through a shared voice and how funded change efforts inform and influence social, institutional, and policy action.