I grew up in Rochester, New York, where I first figured out that I learn best by going all in. Most of what I loved as a kid looked unrelated on the surface: stage managing theater productions, training for track and field, spending my free time on whatever corner of history I couldn't stop thinking about. But each one was teaching me to see how things connect, how every part of a system shapes the others, whether that's a scene change that shifts the orchestra's timing and the entire feel of an act, how foot positioning in the ring can change the trajectory of an entire throw, or how a single policy decision ripples through a community for generations. I've never been able to pick just one thing, which is how I ended up at Lafayette studying both biology and history.
Earning a B.S. in biology and a B.A. in history meant I got the "why don't you just pick one?" question a lot. But to me, both were asking the same question in different languages: how do complex systems work, and what happens to the people inside them? I competed in Division I track and field, throwing the hammer until my body and health had other plans. But stepping away from athletics pushed me toward the thing I actually wanted to spend my energy on: building something for my community, and I wouldn't trade how that turned out.
Lafayette didn't have enough support for LGBTQ+ students when I arrived, so I helped change that. My partner K and I co-founded OUT Lafayette to create space for LGBTQ+ students to gather, and we launched Lavender Lane, a living-learning community in a converted sorority house that became the college's first gender-affirming and gender-neutral housing option. This culminated in the project I'm still proudest of: bringing panels of the National AIDS Memorial Quilt to campus for the first time in three decades.
I also got Ember during college, a black lab who has been my best friend ever since.
