Hi! Thanks for stopping by my least favorite page. The dreaded personal bio. No one likes to write them. No one one likes to read them. So to make it easier on all of us, I’ve broken it down in 2 sections, starting with…

The Need-To-Knows

I’m a creative professional with 12+ years of experience crafting stories in the advertising and entertainment industries. 

My favorite thing in the world is making people laugh. And donuts. I love donuts.

Performing comedy, writing, designing, cartooning, volunteering to get voters to the polls through deep canvassing, and teaching. Both professionally and personally, my passion has always been storytelling with the goal to create positive change my own life, in my community, and globally. 

The Nice-To-Knows

After a normal enough upbringing in the Midwest, I attended the University of Dayton and graduated with degrees in English and Education. Right out of school, I moved to Dalian, China, to teach English. Having grown up in suburban/rural Ohio, this experience was foundational in my understanding of culture, social structures, and communication as phenomena. This, in turn, shaped my abilities to communicate as a writer and visual artist in ways beyond just the simple written or spoken word.

Thanks to some challenges with my visa, I returned to the U.S. a year later and landed a job teaching English and History in a program for at-risk students. My two and a half years as an English as a Second Language teacher in China and as a public school teacher in the U.S. became a cornerstone for my understanding of the basic principles of communicating across age, cultural, language, and media literacy gaps.

Then I decided I needed to level up. Back to school it was. I attended the University of Vermont, graduating with an Master’s in English Literature with a focus on narrative forms. This focus on narrative forms continued my deep study of how written and visual representations interact as modes of communication.

After grad school, I entered the advertising and marketing industry as a copywriter in Cleveland, Ohio. Two years later, I uprooted and moved to Los Angeles, where I began work in screenwriting and film development. Eventually returning to the advertising industry, I worked my way up from being a subject matter expert and content creator to my first role as a Creative Director.

Now here I am a handful of years later, still looking for ways to become a better communicator and storyteller. Because that’s what’s important to me — telling diverse stories to diverse audiences to affect positive change in the world around me.

Aaand we’re done.