bio
I was born in Portland, Oregon in 1977 where until I was 10 years old I lived on a hobby farm just outside the city's urban growth boundary. My family later moved to a traditional suburban neighborhood closer to Portland for better access to schools, but I've always kept a soft spot in my heart for the rhythms of farm life.
During my freshman year of college, I took an opportunity to study abroad over a spring in London. The trip had a great impression on me and I subsequently began a course of international studies which I completed in 1999 at Georgetown University in Washington. After working in international affairs for several years in the nation's capital, I found myself interested and more involved in the realities and contradictions of the city around me – one with impressive racial diversity, but also of great racial division; a city with some of the greatest cultural resources in the country, but also one grappling with crumbling neighborhoods and schools. After nearly two years of thought, volunteering and investigation about careers in urban affairs, I decided my next step was graduate school.
In 2004, I moved to Berkeley, California where I enrolled in the Master of City Planning program at UC Berkeley. Over the next two years, I enrolled in several courses in the college’s landscape architecture department where I was significantly influenced and inspired by faculty members engaged in community and participatory design. I subsequently enrolled in the Master of Landscape Architecture program and began a new chapter in my studies as a design student. After three short years, I have now graduated only to continue with personal research involving travel as a recipient of the Geraldine Knight Scott Travel Fellowship. This travel commences in February and will continue through April 2010.
