After volunteering as a teacher in a prison throughout my freshman year of college, I realized that education was where I felt most passionate and of use. The experience also raised my awareness of the tremendous social consequences that can result from a flawed educational system. Upon my completion of a Bachelor of Arts in Education from Boston College's Lynch School of Education, I moved to Costa Rica where I taught English at a public elementary school in the central mountains. I then taught social studies at a chancellor-designated School Under Registration Review (SURR) middle school in the Bronx, NY. For the seven subsequent years, I had the privilege of teaching social studies and language arts at the Hoboken Charter School (HCS), an urban charter school in New Jersey which serves children in grades kindergarten through twelve. In July 2009, I became the Co-Director and Principal of grades K-8 at HCS and am finishing up my first challenging yet exciting first year as an administrator.

While teaching, I earned a Master of Arts in Arts and Humanities from Columbia University's Teachers College. At present, I am completing a Master of Arts in Urban Educational Leadership at New Jersey City University. An advocate of service-learning and character education, I have had the good fortune to lead presentations on these topics at numerous national conferences and Vanderbilt University’s Peabody College Independent School Leadership Institute. In June, I served on the Whole Child Commission II and in September, I will be presenting at the Teachers’ Conference 2010 in Singapore and touring effective schools there. I also had an article published through Educational Leadership as well as a monthly column for the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development’s newsletter, Education Update. In 2008, I was honored with ASCD's Outstanding Young Educator Award (OYEA). Additional honors have included the 2008 Eva's Village Service Award, a Promising Practices Award through the Character Education Partnership (CEP) and the Pennsylvania Governor's Award for Excellence in Community Outreach.

As an educational leader, it is my goal for students to view the world with critical minds and be inspired and prepared to be agents of positive change in their communities and in the world at large. I learned a tremendous amount about education policy this past year as a Teaching Ambassador Fellow and felt that my voice and that of teachers I represented in my region and especially in charter schools was heard by Department officials.