About Me

I'm a researcher, facilitator, writer, project manager, and consultant who has spent the last ten years working towards a better vision for graduate education –– namely, a graduate education that allows many different people to flourish and that brings us closer to a more just and sustainable world. 

I have served as the program manager and director of two major Mellon Foundation grants totaling over $4 million, and I have a wide network in the world of graduate education reform. I'm also the co-editor of the forthcoming Graduate Education for a Thriving Humanities Ecosystem (Modern Language Association, 2023). 

Most recently, I served as the director of the Mellon-funded PublicsLab at the Graduate Center, City University of New York. At the PublicsLab I supported doctoral students in doing public-facing scholarship and worked toward structural changes within the institution that would support that work. I facilitated the Mellon Humanities Public Fellowship program, which trained early career graduate students in the humanities and interpretive social sciences in the methods and practice of public scholarship. I also developed the PublicsLab internship program, oversaw a robust slate of student-driven events related to public scholarship and professional development, and served as a consultant for 17 curriculum grants to departments and programs. 

In 2021 and 2022, I taught the Graduate Center’s first for-credit internship course for doctoral students, "Scholarly Praxis at Work in the World," the syllabus for which is available here. This course combines an interdisciplinary cohort model, practical approaches to career exploration, and a critical lens that examines the role of power and privilege in shaping our professional selves. It is, as I state in the syllabus, a course about surviving and even thriving in the world we've got, while simultaneously trying to create the world we want. 

Previously, I was the project manager of the Modern Language Association's Mellon-funded Connected Academics project, which supported expanding career horizons for language and literature PhDs. At MLA, I ran a New York City-based proseminar on careers and also created a condensed, nation-wide version of the proseminar at the MLA's annual convention. I also served as an institutional co-author of the MLA's Doctoral Student Career Planning Guide for departments and programs. 

My past work also includes teaching German language and literature courses and doing undergraduate advising at Stanford University, where I earned my PhD in German Studies in 2015. In the third year of my degree, I decided for a variety of reasons (among them, the desire for some geographic control over my life) that I would not pursue tenure track jobs. I was fortunate to be in a relatively supportive department at a university with plenty of resources –– but not everyone is that lucky. Over time, I have come to understand that pulling on the thread of PhD careers starts a process of unraveling that leads to existential questions about the very purpose of the entire graduate education enterprise –– but also that the threads of graduate education, once unraveled, have the potential to be rewoven in ways that make it more accessible and inclusive of more people and of greater benefit to our broader world. That is my goal as an educator, consultant, and writer. 

Outside of work, I enjoy weight lifting, mixology, and my cats. After eight years in New York City, I am thrilled to have landed in Eugene, Oregon. Learn more about my consulting and workshop services, and reach out if you'd like to have a conversation.