I grew up in a town in the middle of Illinois named Normal (yes, really), went to college in Minnesota, and then moved to New York City for work. In 2005, I happened to go to my first contra dance, a social dance form with deep roots in this part of New England, which led to my first trip up to Greenfield a few months later to go dancing at the Guiding Star Grange. I fell in love with western Massachusetts in general and Greenfield in particular, and moved to the area in 2007.

My professional path has taken me from immigration law (as a legal assistant, not a lawyer), to experiential education, to risk and crisis management, to humanitarian crisis work. In 2012, I completed Masters degrees in urban and environmental planning and international affairs at Tufts University, after which I spent several years working as a conflict and crisis researcher, mainly in South Sudan and northern Uganda. 

I moved back to the Valley full time in 2016, fulfilling the dream I’d had for a decade to buy a house in Greenfield and put down sturdy roots here. From 2019 to 2021, I was co-Executive Director of NELCWIT, the sexual and domestic violence crisis center serving Franklin County and the North Quabbin, and since 2021 I’ve worked at Movement Voter Project, a political philanthropy based in Northampton that supports voter engagement and community power-building across the country.