After attending community college and teacher training, I started my career as a high school English teacher in the poorest congressional district in the country. I went in wide-eyed, and two years of teaching quickly taught me that much of what happened inside the classroom started outside it.

I pursued a career in research and teaching because I'm passionate about ensuring communities don’t simply get by, but flourish. I believe that to close income and wealth gaps, we must deeply analyze issues of wealth and demographics, and in training the next generation of researchers, we must be guided by a clear moral compass.

Through rigorous mixed-methods research and warm, consistent teaching and mentoring, I develop insights into the nature of inequality and solutions to it, and pass the torch to the next generation of qualitative and quantitative researchers.