Sasha Parodi

Sasha Parodi is MAPC’s Community Engagement and Subregional Programs Manager  and the instructor of our Sustainable Strategies for Language Access series (May 21-28, 2026). Growing up, Sasha split her childhood between the United States and Russia, eventually returning to the US to attend Boston University where she earned a B.A. in Psychology and a B.S. in Journalism. Sasha has always had an interest in working with people, so a career in the community building field was a natural move for her. She explains, “growing up I had thought I would go into doing work related to psychology… and had always gravitated towards community-based settings.”

Sasha discovered Mel King Institute after attending one of our strategic planning workshops while she was at her first job coordinating and restructuring youth programs at La Colaborativa. After joining MAPC’s community engagement team in 2019, she became even more involved with MKI. Sasha recalls,

the Community Engagement team has a strong relationship with Mel King Institute and so in my first six months I attended one of the community engagement trainings that we run every year as a trainee, and that was really eye opening. After a couple of years at the agency, I ended up running a couple of the community engagement trainings and [most recently] piloted [Sustainable Strategies for Language Access last year].

Sasha spent her childhood in two different languages and cultures, so language access has always been important to her. As a beginner Russian speaker in Russia, she had to catch up to the level of her elementary school classmates, and although she was fluent in English when she returned to the US for university, she found she had to learn the American colloquialisms and pop-culture references that she had missed out on as a teenager. Sasha remembers,

people were referencing all these things that I didn't understand, but they assumed I understood because I don't have an accent. It took a lot of time, listening, and observing to learn the lay of the land. I was well positioned to think about language access because I needed things translated for me to understand the work that my own place of employment was doing, which then helped me see that this was a broader need that people had. As someone who has also experienced language challenges in my life, I know how isolating it can feel to be in a space and have people assume that you're [understanding] everything when you're not.

Looking forward, Sasha is excited to continue helping MAPC and their partners bring community members together in fun, positive, and generative environments. Outside of work, she enjoys salsa dancing, community organizing, and volunteering.