At the time, I thought I might spend my life in archives and classrooms. Instead, much of the work happened on foot: crossing Cape Town and its townships with a bag and recording equipment, sitting down with people to record oral histories as they recalled the family journeys that had brought them to the city. I was studying Black immigrants from the Americas who had migrated there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tracing their lives through the city's history, its racial and class dynamics, its legacy of displacement, and the long shadow of apartheid.

I loved the work, but something was shifting. The deeper I went into history, the more I felt compelled toward action. The more I listened to people tell their own histories, in their own words, the more I understood that few things are immutable. What we take as settled is often just inherited assumption. What looks fixed and permanent was once chosen, stumbled upon, imposed. And what was made can be remade. We are not stuck with what we inherited. Communities can shape what comes next. We can build better.

I wanted to build what was next.

When I returned to the U.S., I joined a national higher education association with an all-women leadership team, and they were formidable. It was there that I became fascinated by the mechanics of mission-driven organizations: the people, processes, culture, governance, strategy, and daily choices that make a mission real. And it was there that I began to develop my lens on organizations and to learn how much communities depend on strong institutions, capable leaders, thoughtful boards, and missions with enough structure behind them to last.

Since then, my work has moved across sectors and contexts, from education and outdoor recreation to environmental and economic justice, but the throughline has held. I build organizations and initiatives, shape strategy and culture, and turn ideas into the structures, relationships, and practices that let good work take root and grow.

Today I live in Virginia with my husband, near family and the region my people are from. Outside of work, I enjoy hiking the Blue Ridge Mountains, making photographs, reading, slowly learning isiZulu, and gathering with people I love.