A native of Front Royal, Virginia, I spent my childhood in southern California before moving with my family to Michigan in 2001. I completed my graduate studies in Houston, Texas, and have lived in Los Angeles, California, since 2019.
I first encountered philosophy as a college freshman in 2008 when I took an Ancient and Medieval Philosophy class. I soon fell in love with wisdom, graduated with my B.A. in philosophy from Sacred Heart Major Seminary in 2012, and decided to continue my studies at the Center for Thomistic Studies at the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas. I earned an M.A. in philosophy in 2014 and completed my Ph.D. in 2019.
I wrote my dissertation under the direction of Jon McGinnis, now at the University of Toronto, writing on “The Causality of Nature in Avicenna’s Physics of the Healing.” In 2018, I was named the American Catholic Philosophical Association’s “Young Scholar,” an award given to the best paper written by a scholar under the age of 35.
In 2019, I joined the philosophy department of Loyola Marymount University as a tenure-track assistant professor. I was promoted to Associate Professor and awarded tenure in 2024, one year ahead of the normal timeline.
I am now also 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 LMU.
An avid traveller and language lover, I completed language immersion programs in Austria, France, Italy, and Spain; I have a special fondness for Vienna and Freiburg im Breisgau. I spent the summer of 2014 studying Latin with Fr. Reginald (Reggie) Foster in Wisconsin.
My professional interest in disability is inspired and informed by my family’s own experiences of impairment and disability, including my own diagnosis of Type 1 Diabetes at the age of 8. We began learning sign language when my sister was born deaf; I am now a proudly bilingual English/ASL aunt to nephew J. and niece S.
Outside the classroom, you can often find me at a local coffee shop, in a HIIT class, reading classic literature, or adding to my collection of owl art. I am often accompanied by my goldendoodle, Marty de Paws:
