For over twenty years, I taught language arts, history, and theatre to children of all ages, in a variety of classroom settings, ranging from public and private schools to small professional theatres and other community-based groups. I developed curricula, collaborated with fellow teachers, and spent two decades learning, up close, how people learn, grow, and change.

I began to think seriously about how I might integrate my experience as a teacher with my desire to support mental, emotional, and social well-being. Social work became the perfect foundation for building a practice rooted in both individual healing and collective care.

Alongside teaching, I've been a community organizer, doing liberatory and justice-oriented work with a variety of grassroots organizations in Charlotte. This work has clarified my belief that healing and justice aren't separate projects: true healing moves across levels — individual, family, community, and the larger systems we all navigate every day.

I also carry my own experience of grief and loss as a bereaved sibling. My sister's death and the sense of profound loss I experienced as a young adult have shaped every aspect of my life — how I relate to my partner, how I parent, how I move through uncertainty and discomfort, and how I show up in community. The psychotherapist, writer, and activist Francis Weller says, "Grief keeps the heart fluid and soft, which helps make compassion possible." My understanding of grief as a guide and mechanism for connection is central to the work I do in therapy, as an educator, and in my community.

Across all of my work, the throughline is the same: I believe in the inherent worth and dignity of every person, and I'm drawn to the work of story, healing, justice, and what it means to be human in community.