At the time, I thought I might spend my life in archives and classrooms, and in the field, including the townships of Cape Town, where I recorded oral histories with community members as they recalled the family journeys that had brought them to the city. I was studying Black immigrants from the Americas who migrated to Cape Town in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, tracing their lives through Cape Town’s history, racial and class dynamics, and the long shadow of apartheid.

I loved the work, but something was shifting. The deeper I went into history, the more interested I became in history as a basis for present-day action. I wanted to understand how people, institutions, and communities carry the past forward, and I wanted to build something different from what we all inherited.

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 international human rights and corporate accountability, but the through-line has held. I build organizations and initiatives, develop leaders, and help translate ideas into the structures, relationships, and practices that allow good work to take root and grow.

I live in Virginia, not far from where I was born, close to family and within reach of the Blue Ridge and Allegheny Mountains. After years of playing in the Colorado Rockies, mountain trails are where I find my way back to myself.

Outside of work, I am usually hiking, making photographs, writing, volunteering, gathering with people I love, or heading toward whatever patch of woods, water, or open sky I can. Family, friendship, community, outdoor play, and connection to the earth are not side interests for me. They are part of how I stay rooted, pay attention, and remember what the work is for.