I have dedicated the majority of my adult life to two things: travel and satisfying an insatiable curiosity about the world around me. I twice joined the United States Peace Corps. I learned to speak languages of which most people have never heard. I backpacked overland from Saigon to Delhi. I climbed the Great Wall. I rafted the Nile. I even lived and worked in Kazakhstan.
There aren’t many people who would drop everything to fulfill a lifelong dream of joining the Peace Corps. Even fewer would sign up a second time. It is this kind of determination and grit that makes me a great journalist. I’m tenacious. I’m resourceful. I don’t let things get in the way of my dreams or a good story.
I stumbled into my first newsroom after being cut from the basketball, softball, cheerleading and volleyball teams in high school. My mother told me to try something that required “a little less physical coordination,” so I listened to my creative writing teacher and joined the school newspaper staff. Years later, I am still enamored by the power of words.
I have worked as a crime reporter in Las Vegas, a magazine writer in Minneapolis, and a daily reporter at news organizations around the country. Most significantly, I pioneered the award-winning social issues beat at the Asheville Citizen-Times, Western North Carolina’s largest daily newspaper. The stories I wrote there did not just raise awareness about societal injustices, they also led to change--new policies in the workplace; revamped city programming; the ousting of a board chairwoman.
With help from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, I spent 2016 researching and reporting on poverty in Buncombe County, an urban hub hidden among the rural, southern Appalachian Mountains. Readers resonated with the series, and one-by-one they called our office to offer help. One man was given a car; another was given a job. This is the impact of local journalism. This is why I keep coming back.
I left reporting four years ago during a time of family crisis, but I never really left journalism behind. Instead, I became the high school creative writing instructor. Now, I am the one shepherding young, talented, and sometimes physically awkward teenagers into the writing lab. Last year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we started publishing our work online.
I am always looking for new projects and partnerships. Contact me if you want to collaborate.
There aren’t many people who would drop everything to fulfill a lifelong dream of joining the Peace Corps. Even fewer would sign up a second time. It is this kind of determination and grit that makes me a great journalist. I’m tenacious. I’m resourceful. I don’t let things get in the way of my dreams or a good story.
I stumbled into my first newsroom after being cut from the basketball, softball, cheerleading and volleyball teams in high school. My mother told me to try something that required “a little less physical coordination,” so I listened to my creative writing teacher and joined the school newspaper staff. Years later, I am still enamored by the power of words.
I have worked as a crime reporter in Las Vegas, a magazine writer in Minneapolis, and a daily reporter at news organizations around the country. Most significantly, I pioneered the award-winning social issues beat at the Asheville Citizen-Times, Western North Carolina’s largest daily newspaper. The stories I wrote there did not just raise awareness about societal injustices, they also led to change--new policies in the workplace; revamped city programming; the ousting of a board chairwoman.
With help from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, I spent 2016 researching and reporting on poverty in Buncombe County, an urban hub hidden among the rural, southern Appalachian Mountains. Readers resonated with the series, and one-by-one they called our office to offer help. One man was given a car; another was given a job. This is the impact of local journalism. This is why I keep coming back.
I left reporting four years ago during a time of family crisis, but I never really left journalism behind. Instead, I became the high school creative writing instructor. Now, I am the one shepherding young, talented, and sometimes physically awkward teenagers into the writing lab. Last year, in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, we started publishing our work online.
I am always looking for new projects and partnerships. Contact me if you want to collaborate.
