The spirit of CivicParent is to contribute to my community by informing friends, neighbors, and community about local public finance. I grew up in New Jersey and my family and I now live in Jersey City.
I am a licensed CPA and formerly worked in public accounting in the tax function. I am now an Assistant Professor at Saint Peter's University, where I teach accounting and taxation. My research interests include accounting education and the CPA pipeline, local budgets, property tax, and school funding.
Civic Parent's Roots.
I started CivicParent in December 2013 after Mayor Fulop reversed from a key campaign promise to help fund the public schools with abatement funding. What started out as a relatively low-cost, easy way for me to research, learn, and share what I learned about abatements and taxes with friends and neighbors has transformed over the years into a fiscal literacy platform that includes:
- A targeted series of articles that aim to help educate taxpayers about core financial data impacting civic life (e.g. Revaluation, Abatements)
- Community organizing & advocacy that leverages the CivicParent.org platform as an information-sharing vehicle
- Civic tools that offer readers interactive, filterable views into state, county, and local public data.
My background.
I volunteered for the Jesuit Volunteer Corps when I was twenty-two. That experience steeped me in Jesuit values of systemic, practiced civic engagement in community, with a particular focus for the marginalized and under-served. If we don’t proactively care for our community, our community will degrade & suffer and those at the margins will be most at risk.
I enjoy learning about, writing about, and talking about taxes because they represent the intersection of public and private interests. We can learn a lot about our community's priorities by looking at how, and where, we prioritize our spending.
I currently work at Saint Peter’s University, the Jesuit University of NJ. It is a welcome return to my civic roots, as I aim to combine my professional background with Ignatian principles.
Brigid D’Souza, CPA, MBA
Have feedback or questions? I am unable to respond to individual emails but I have created this form as a questions & feedback loop that I monitor on a regular basis.
I have an important disclaimer that you can and should please read here.
