​​Catherine Elizabeth DeLazzero is a writing and communication specialist. She collaborates with individuals and organizations to develop a variety of writing and research products in many different industries around the world. (See samples and reviews.)

 

Catherine is also an academic researcher affiliated with Teachers College, Columbia University, where she serves on the Institutional Review Board (see post). Catherine's academic work focuses on how we can use writing, communication, and research to solve practical problems in ways that reflect ethical principles of respect, beneficence, and justice.

 

Catherine currently serves as principal researcher on several studies: the first on writing about violence, the second on the impacts of NYC community boards, and the third on the consequences of institutional responses to violations (e.g. mechanisms that silence, such as NDAs, and those that enable voice). The third is funded by and builds on the work of Lift Our Voices. Catherine has a book under contract with Routledge on the teaching of writing. Her dissertation, Writing for Diversity, investigates the impacts of writing assessment on students’ experiences with writing and learning in NYC public high schools and CUNY colleges.

 

For each project, Catherine develops original research methods and recommendations for action. (See recent article in Harvard Data Science Review and list of ~50 presentations she has delivered.)

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Catherine has taught at high school, undergraduate, and graduate levels in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and Queens, across the United States and in South Africa; and served as a Fulbright Specialist in România and Thailand. Recently, she taught writing in undergraduate and graduate programs at Columbia University. From 2014 to 2023, Catherine served as a writing mentor for the Prison Writing Program at PEN America, which advocates for open expression and the freedom to write worldwide. From 2014 to 2022, she served in leadership positions on Manhattan Community Board 7.

 

Catherine earned a B.A. from Oberlin College and an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Teachers College, Columbia University. Catherine began her working career at Port Morris, a tile, marble, and terrazzo business in the Hunts Point neighborhood of the Bronx. Her paternal family founded Port Morris in 1904 after immigrating to the Bronx from Italy in 1890. Her career in education follows the footsteps of her maternal grandmother Catherine, who graduated from Hunter College, CUNY in 1975 and taught home economics in the Bronx and Brooklyn.​

 

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