Committed to making teacher education and K-12 teaching more racially equitable and socially just fields, I am interested in understanding potential mechanisms for researchers, policymakers, and practitioners to uplift the status of the K-12 teaching profession. Grounded in this commitment, I conduct mixed-methods research examining the institutional and organizational contexts of K-12 teaching, with special attention to the role of reforms in shaping teachers’ socialization into their professional roles.

My dissertation, The Making of a Professional: Institutional Logics of Teacher Education and Teacher Professional Identity Formation, examines the extent to which the major reform agendas of teaching and teacher education (e.g., professionalization, deregulation, and democratization) are institutionalized. In particular, this work draws on institutional theory to examine the extent to which teacher education programs draw upon different “logics” of reform in their work, and the ways in which both the broader reform environment and the organizational contexts of teacher education shape teachers’ professional identities. Additionally, I examine the ways in which the racialized organizational context of teachers’ socialization shapes their professional identities and their ability to retain their professional integrity.

My work centrally seeks to bridge the gaps between research, policy, and practice. Accordingly, I have conducted and disseminated research in both academic and applied settings. Currently, I am working with Dr. Sarah Schneider Kavanagh to re-design the Collaboratory for Teaching and Teacher Education at Penn GSE, a national center committed to elevating the status of the teaching profession. Previously as an IES Predoctoral Fellow, I have worked with the American Institutes for Research on the COVID-19 and Equity in Education project, and the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction Educator Recruitment and Support team to support statewide teacher licensure reform in North Carolina. While at Penn, I have served on a range of research teams at the Consortium for Policy Research in Education studying teacher and school leadership, teacher turnover, and Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports (PBIS) in the School District of Philadelphia. Prior to graduate school, I worked as a Research and Policy Assistant at the Learning Policy Institute, where I supported research and leadership of a statewide effort to scale K-12 performance assessments in California. I started my career as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Helsinki, studying Finnish teacher education and development.

As a graduate student, my work has been funded through a National Academy of Education (NAEd)/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship, an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Predoctoral Fellowship, a William B. and Roberta V. Castetter fellowship, and dissertation grants from the Collaboratory of Teacher Education at the University of Pennsylvania, and the GAPSA-Provost Fellowship for Interdisciplinary Innovation. I hold a B.A. in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics (PPE) from Pomona College.