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 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. Find my most recent work here.
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 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. Find my most recent work here.