News

ITLC Welcomes Research Associate Shayna Gleason to our Team

Posted September 2022

Shayna brings to the ITLC/TWC direct experience and research expertise related to workforce development, paratransit, and older workers. After graduating from Carleton College, she began her career as Coordinator of Age-Friendly Greater Pittsburgh, part of the World Health Organization’s international initiative to create inclusive and accessible communities for all ages. She was then introduced to transit as a community engagement liaison and software trainer with a Pittsburgh regional paratransit service. She trained service providers, conducted community outreach efforts, developed community partnerships, and helped design an online travel navigator. 

 

As a graduate student at UMass Boston, Shayna worked with the Center for Social and Demographic Research on Aging. She helped design and implement a program evaluation for a remote employment training program targeting older workers. Shayna is excited about the broad range of research work she’ll be doing at the ITLC/TWC, including opportunities to work on greater inclusion of older adults and people with disabilities in the transit workforce and support for the demand response public transit workforce. 

 

Shayna recently had a paper accepted for publication on the experiences of paratransit providers in the era of ride-hailing companies, and she will be finishing her dissertation while she works. She is originally from New Jersey, plays the piano, and describes herself “a loyal if bashful Yankees fan” (apologies to our Boston readers), but she says she will dutifully wave around a curly Washington “W” hat at Nations Park in honor of her new home.