From teaching to research.
I began my career in public and private schools, first in Nebraska and then in New York City, working as both a general and special educator. Across settings, I kept seeing the same challenge: students with reading and writing difficulties were often working incredibly hard, while the adults around them were left without the preparation, tools, and systems needed to respond well.
I wanted better answers and clarity about what works, for whom, under what conditions, and most importantly, how to make it usable in real classrooms.
That question led me to my PhD, with a focus on learning disabilities, at The University of Texas at Austin. There, I studied under Dr. Jessica Toste and trained as a fellow with the National Center for Leadership in Intensive Intervention, a U.S. Department of Education program focused on preparing leaders to address significant and persistent learning difficulties.
During my doctoral training, I worked on federally funded reading intervention projects and contributed to the design and testing of interventions for students with persistent reading difficulties, including dyslexia. That work shaped how I think about evidence and reading research: it needs to be rigorous, but it also needs to be usable.
What I do now
Today, I am an Assistant Professor of Dyslexia in the Department of Learning Sciences at Georgia State University. I train graduate students, coordinate Georgia State's dyslexia endorsement program, and lead research on spelling, word reading, adolescent literacy, intervention, and implementation. I also serve as a faculty affiliate with Georgia State's Center for Research on the Challenges of Acquiring Language and Literacy.
My research has been published in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, Journal of Learning Disabilities, and Educational Psychology Review. My work has also been recognized by the Council for Exceptional Children's Division for Learning Disabilities and Division for Research, including awards for outstanding research and quantitative dissertation research.
Across my current projects, I develop and test literacy intervention, study how students respond, and investigate how evidence-based practices can be implemented in ways that are responsive to the realities of schools, systems, and communities.
Beyond the University
The university is one important home for this work, but I believe evidence also must become usable beyond journals, courses, and conference presentations. The truth is that we already know a great deal from the science of reading, writing, and learning. The challenge (and opportunity) is helping that knowledge take root in the places where students learn.
In my applied work, I partner with schools, districts, organizations, and state-level teams on professional learning, intervention review, curriculum development, implementation planning, and guidance. The level of scale changes, but the purpose does not: make what we know from research useful enough to improve instruction, systems, and student support.
In this work, I start with what teams already have in front of them: student data, current instructional practices, existing programs, and the systems educators are working within. From there, we identify which active ingredients of evidence-based literacy practice are present, missing, or need to be deimplemented to have impact. Then we design a focused path forward: what to keep, what to strengthen, what to streamline, and how to make the work hold over time.
Across settings, I bring the lens of a researcher and the pragmatism of an educator. My aim is to close the distance between what we know from research and what students experience in practice, so more students receive the instruction and support they deserve.