Bio

I was born and raised in Rockford, Illinois and received my undergraduate education from Rock Valley Community College (2010–2012) and the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2012–2015; B.A., Psychology with Honors). I completed an undergraduate honors thesis at UW-Madison advised by Dr. Kristin Shutts examining children’s attention to nonverbal social power cues. I also worked as an undergraduate research assistant with Dr. Michael Koenigs and the Mind Research Network, where I conducted clinical research with incarcerated men. In 2015 I began working as a lab manager for Dr. Kristin Shutts. In this role, I also collaborated with Drs. Jenny Saffran (studying infants’ social word learning), Chuck Kalish (studying the relation between children’s social skills and academic achievement), and Trish Devine (studying social bias interventions). I joined Cornell University as a social psychology PhD student in 2018, working primarily with Dr. Katie Kinzler and also with Dr. Melissa Ferguson. I earned my master’s degree in psychology from Cornell in August 2020. The Kinzler lab moved from Cornell University to the University of Chicago in 2020, and I earned my master’s degree in psychology from the University of Chicago in 2022. I am now a PhD candidate in psychology, and I expect to complete my PhD in 2026.

Aside from my academic pursuits, I enjoy board games, live music, drawing, writing poetry, 35mm photography, knitting, and clay modeling.