Before my Fellowship with the U.S. Department of Education, I taught 5th grade at Patricia Knowles Elementary as a self-contained bilingual teacher in Leander Independent School District (ISD), located in Central Texas near Austin. Before coming to the Austin area, I taught in Weslaco ISD at both Cleckler-Heald Elementary and Beatriz Garza Middle School. Weslaco is located in deep-south Texas just a few miles from the U.S./Mexico border, commonly referred to as the Rio Grande Valley. During my nine years in Weslaco, I taught 3rd, 4th, 6th, and 8th grades as a bilingual teacher. In 2001, I received the distinction of being Weslaco's District Teacher of the Year and proudly represented my district as a Texas Regional Teacher of the Year Nominee.

I attended Pan American University in Edinburg, Texas where I received my B.A. in Government. After several years as an urban regional planner with the Rio Grande Valley Council of Government, I returned to school to earn my teaching credentials through an alternative certification program. In 2003, I received the South Texas Fellowship to attend the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Policy at the University of Texas in Austin. I completed my master's work in public policy in May 2008. I also received an Honorable Discharge from the United States Marine Corps for serving eight years in the Select Marine Corps Reserve as a Peacetime/Wartime public affairs specialist.

My interest and area of expertise is in bilingual education and in the collection and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data to help inform instruction. In addition, I am also interested in the use of technology in the classroom. While at Leander ISD, I implemented a pilot program where my bilingual students used video iPods both in the classroom and at home to help develop their second language acquisition of English.

While serving as a Washington Teaching Ambassador Fellow with the U.S. Department of Education, I have engaged in a wide variety of activities. I contributed monthly to the selection of education articles for the Office of Innovation and Improvement’s online newsletter: The Education Innovator. I collaborated with an Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) Reauthorization Workgroup focusing on English Language Learners. I advocated for dual-language instruction as an approach for teaching EL Learners, which was integrated into the ESEA Blueprint. I worked with the U.S. Treasury Department's education team focusing on financial literacy, specifically on the National Teacher Toolkit. I collaborated with President Obama's speech writer on an education speech the President made to the Nation’s children on September 8, 2009. I presented to state education commissioners at a conference in Phoenix, Arizona. I helped to facilitate and monitor a peer review panel that evaluated twenty i3 Development Application grants. I served as a Special Advisor to the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic Americans. This work included hiring and supervising several college student interns and representing ED at the White House Domestic Policy Group focusing on immigrant integration. Finally, I planted a five-year old, live oak tree on the premises of ED as a living memorial to the over five-thousand ED employees that have served during the last 30 years, current ED employees and to future ED employees. The tree serves as a commemoration of the majestic, mature oak pictured on ED's seal, which turned 30 years old on May 7, 2010.