Director, Penn State Center in Philadelphia

As Director of the Penn State Center in Philadelphia, Shivaani creates pathways for engaged scholarship in order to develop new leaders and changemakers among faculty, students, and community members. With more than twenty-five years of experience in community organizing and adult education, she uses critical, public, and multimodal pedagogies to anchor transformative learning opportunities and facilitate knowledge exchange and mobilization. 

In 2005, she co-founded the Media Mobilizing Project (recently rebranded as the Movement Alliance Project), in which she led numerous campaigns and coalitions that reframed issues and advocated for changes, most notably surrounding workers’ rights, digital inclusion, corporate accountability, public education, and predictive policing. Since joining Penn State in 2010, she has been developing a portfolio of collaborative learning and research initiatives through consultation with community leaders and faculty. She earned her undergraduate degree in urban studies from the University of Pennsylvania, a master’s in learning design and technology from Bloomsburg University, and a doctorate in adult education from Penn State.