I grew up in a suburb of Grand Rapids, MI as the only child of a therapist and a math professor - the perfect combination for an evaluator. Being an only child taught me strong observation and listening skills.

I went to Beloit College in Wisconsin, where I majored in Women’s and Gender Studies. This is where my commitment to making the world a better place was fostered and grew.

I got my Masters in Social Work from the University of Michigan. I thought I would go into sexual assault prevention and policy work, but then I found evaluation in my last semester of grad school and fell in love. I saw it as the way that I could use my analytical skills in a way to serve communities that I cared about. Because of this, I always bring a social work lens to my work.

After graduate school, I was hired at the University of Michigan School of Social Work to help build their community-based evaluation work and train graduate students in evaluation. Here, I learned a lot about the intersection of research and evaluation, working with faculty members and existing within a research institution. And this is also what committed me to doing community-based evaluation work, rather than research.

From there, I did a brief stint as an internal evaluator and development staff at a small nonprofit in Ann Arbor, MI. I came face-to-face with the realities of actually doing the work and got exposure to how nonprofits and community-based organizations operate.

After that, I moved to Denver in 2017 to join an evaluation consulting firm. I was able to strengthen my experience with complex environments, systems evaluation, and facilitating learning through evaluation.

Throughout all of these professional experiences, I also broaden my horizons by exposing myself to new experiences and new ways of thinking. This has brought me to Illuminary Perspectives, where we elevate learning as the center of our practice to elevate, tweak, and strengthen social change work. I currently live in Denver, CO with my partner. I love to travel (safely) any chance I get - preferably exploring somewhere new and warm.