About Me

Born and raised in Chicago, I earned a PhD in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. Beginning in Fall 2023, I will be an Assistant Professor of Management and Public Affairs in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University.

I am interested in understanding how, why, and in what ways the nonprofit sector is racialized and how this system impacts the work of nonprofits led by people of color, particularly those led by African Americans. He is currently working on a book project, Serving and Thriving in a Hard Place, that develops and tests a novel theoretical framework called the Racialized Nonprofit Industrial Complex (RNIC) which offers a conceptual view of the sector as a racialized social system and explores how it impacts the work of Black-led organizations. The project is based on four years of ethnographic data collected in Madison, Wisconsin and Montgomery, Alabama – two empirical cases that he describes as middle cities.

This project, and his other work, reflects a fundamental understanding that questions determine methodological choices. To that end, my work utilizes both qualitative and quantitative methods with a preference for the former while recognizing that each approach can (and should) inform the other as part of a dialectical relationship with the aim of gaining a deeper understanding of social phenomena. This view of methods reflects extensive methodological training and deep passion for teaching students how to answer research questions.

My teaching interests are in nonprofit organizations; management and leadership; race and inequality; qualitative methods; and technical communication. In addition to teaching and research, outside of the Glenn College Dr. Wilson is a Faculty Fellow in the Justice Labs of America at Brown University. He is also a Fellow in the New York University Stern School of Business. Previously, he has been affiliated with and funded by the Institute for Research on Poverty. He also consults nonprofits on leadership and philanthropy strategy.

I invite you to read more about my dissertation, research, teaching, and experience with funded projects. You may also access my vita here.