A native of Front Royal, Virgina, I spent my childhood in southern California before moving with my family to Michigan in 2001. I first encountered philosophy as a freshman at Sacred Heart Major Seminary in 2008. I soon fell in love with wisdom, and so I continued my studies at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, earning an M.A. in 2014 and Ph.D. in 2019.
I completed my dissertation under the direction of Jon McGinnis, now at the University of Toronto, writing on “The Causality of Nature in Avicenna’s Metaphysics of the Healing.“
In 2019, I joined the philosophy department of Loyola Marymount University as a tenure-track assistant professor. I was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2024. I am currently a faculty associate of the Nova Forum for Catholic Thought at the University of Southern California and a faculty fellow for the Mellon Foundation Project Habitable Worlds: A Disability, Ethics, and AI Think Tank at Loyola Marymount University.
I have completed immersion language programs in Austria, France, Italy, and Spain and I have a special fondness for Vienna. I spent the summer of 2014 studying latin with Reginald Foster. My family and I began learning ASL when my sister was born deaf. I am now a proudly bilingual aunt to my nephew, J.
My professional interest in disability is inspired and informed by my family’s first-hand experiences of impairment and disability, including my own diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes.
When not in the classroom, you can usually find me in a local coffee shop, in a HIIT class, or exploring the world with my goldendoodle, Marty de Paws.
