Emily Klukas

Creative, cross-field collaborator

Emily is driven by a strong, personal commitment to community-driven solutions around stigmatized conditions and identities. Drawing from her academic and professional experiences in international community public health and developmental psychology, she facilitates client insight by clearly synthesizing a range of information and perspectives from multiple sources to create an integrated picture of where we are, where we are going, and how we can get there.

Emily specializes in the intersection between communications, evaluation, and strategic design, with technical skills to support creative and collaborative solutions. She provides consultancy services for a range of clients including grassroots and private organizations, academic partners, and government agencies, focusing on health and human rights. Her work bridges research, evaluation, and data analysis (qualitative and quantitative); stakeholder engagement, communications planning, and content development; and management, staff development, and integrated initiative design.

At TCC Group:

• ViiV Healthcare
  • Emily played a key role in a women in HIV-focused initiative’s formative listening and communication campaign. She co-wrote the ethnographic report (from data collected by a partner organization), having explored the networks of care that cis- and transgender Black women create and engage in. Her experience working on the ground with community members, organizations, and researchers, provided a depth of understanding of what works, as well as how HIV care currently fits—and could best fit—into this existing care infrastructure. To elevate the stories of the women in the report, Emily led the writing of a short theatrical performance piece, co-created with community actors, with a debut performance in late 2017.
  • Emily is an innovative and practical contributor to shaping opportunities that elevate a HIV-focused program’s research to understand and address the complexities of the epidemic in Jackson, MS, and Baltimore, MD. She co-authored and packaged the program’s cornerstone research and spearheaded the comprehensive evaluation of a co-created immersive theater performance.
  • With her synergistic approach to the client’s corporate philanthropy work, Emily weaves her expertise in learning and evaluation, communications, and initiative building to align and integrate complex program components. The results are powerful communications that elevate the overall program, reflecting the perspectives of and resonating with diverse communities.

Before TCC Group:

• Latino Commission on AIDS: Emily co-directed the agency’s national capacity building assistance program and served as deputy director of research and evaluation. She led a team of five in formative and summative evaluation for 20 local, regional, and national programs. Highlights of her work spanned community-based research with Latinos in the Southern U.S. to support local leadership and capacity development; social marketing campaign evaluation for National Latino AIDS Awareness Day; and curriculum development and coaching for improved organizational management, grant writing, and monitoring and evaluation.
• Thai Committee for Refugees Foundation: Emily supported this Bangkok-based civil society organization as a project officer supporting a community-CSR collaboration with Vietnamese and Pakistani refugee communities. She served as a volunteer coordinator connecting young people from around the world with directed internships with the organization.

Education:

• Australian Catholic University
  • MSW
• New York University
  • MPH, International Community Public Health
• University of Minnesota
  • BS, Child Psychology

Affiliations:

• Member of Delta Omega Honorary Society for Public Health, Delta Beta Chapter

Additional Works:

• Burns, P., Klukas, E., Bender, M., Gomillia-Sims, C., Omondi, A. and Poteat, T. (2022). As Much as I Can – Utilizing immersive theatre to reduce HIV-related stigma and discrimination toward Black men who have sex with men in the Deep South. Community Health Equity Research and Policy. 0(0), 1-13.
• Polomski, D., Klukas, E., Mullen, M. (2021). Towards an empirical understanding of ethical consumption in Southeast Asia. In: Gomez, J. & Ramcharan, R. (eds) Business and Human Rights in Southeast Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore.
• Klukas, E. & Brewer, R. (2021). When we feel whole: Learnings from the accelerate initiative. ViiV Healthcare.
• Klukas, E. (2017). Networks that care: An ethnographic research study of Black women in New Orleans. ViiV Healthcare.
• Klukas, E. (2016). Meet me where I want to be: An ethnographic research study of Black gay men in Baltimore, MD and Jackson, MS. ViiV Healthcare
• Klukas, E., Valera, E., Montenegro, J., & Vega, MY., (2015). Being visible by piercing the stigma veil: Latinos in the deep south. Latino Commission on AIDS: New York.
• Channer, A., Klukas, E., & Morales, G., Vega, MY(2014). Assessing community readiness for structural interventions to prevent the spread of HIV: The case of the HIV home test. Latino Commission on AIDS: New York.
• Kapadia, F., Finer, L., Klukas, E. (2011). Associations between perceived partner support and relationship dynamics with timing of pregnancy termination. Women’s Health Issues, 21(3), S8-S13.