Megan Taylor Williams
Artist, Educator, and Community Developer
Megan is an analog collage artist, ceramicist, educator, and community developer living in Sacramento, California. Her work is dedicated to capturing the flow and inter-connectivity of humans to one another and the “natural,” or more-than-human world.
Megan is a community-engaged artist with a passion for collaborative creative processes. She has exhibited her collage work at Third Space Artist Collective in Davis, Sacramento Pipeworks, and the music festival Shabang in San Luis Obispo. At present, she teaches a class at the UC Davis Craft Center entitled “Photosynthesis: Cyanotype & Collage” which is a cross-studio collaboration, bringing together two different mediums to inspire play and creativity in both. She has also lead this class as a workshop with Valley Spark at their annual Playa Academy.
Her work as an artist is heavily influenced by her post-graduate studies. Megan obtained her Master of Science in Community Development at University of California, Davis. She worked with the Feminist Research Institute as a graduate student researcher on her thesis project centering their Environmental Justice Leaders Program. Her master’s thesis project was a collaboratively designed evaluative endeavor that culminated in a report with recommendations for how the institute may best cultivate community-university partnerships that better reflect and serve long-term community needs.. Megan’s focus within her studies outside of her thesis project was on public space and infrastructure, green space design, community-based participatory processes, and community cultural power.
Megan’s professional background encompasses state social service provision, local governance, education, and sustainable agriculture. She currently works at the California Department of Social Services supporting child and adult nutrition in care facilities across the state. As a former local government liaison, Megan has helped address over 4,000 community questions and concerns across a wide network of local governance structures. During her time in Howard County Government, she helped form and worked closely with La Alianza Latina, the Latino Workgroup of Howard County. Her work is informed and influenced by her passion for equity & justice-oriented community engaged work, policy, and research. Before serving Howard County full-time in her position as Constituent Services & Executive Liaison, Megan held a research technician position at the USDA’s Sustainable Agricultural Systems Lab in Beltsville, MD and a farm apprenticeship at ECO City Farms in Edmonston, MD. Her experience in education spans her entire adult life, from leading before and after-school programming for middle and elementary school youth, to her role as a teaching assistant throughout graduate school. She spent five months teaching English in Panguipulli, Los Rios Region of Chile through the Chilean Ministry of Education’s English Opens Doors program.
Megan is committed to activism and co-powering communities from Maryland to California. Her work in California has prioritized mutual aid and connecting communities to vital resources. In Maryland, she served as the President of the Howard County Young Democrats, member of the HoCo NAACP, and member of the Howard County Conservancy Board of Trustees. Her commitment is also evident in her accomplishments during her time studying Environmental Science and Policy, with a Spanish Minor at the University of Maryland College Park. As an former brother of Alpha Phi Omega, the national co-ed community service fraternity, she received the Steven Martin Scholarship for her academic achievement and commitment to community service. She was awarded the Excellence in Leadership & the Civic Engagement Awards through the Beyond the Classroom: Civic Leadership and Community Engagement program.
Megan Taylor Williams 