Biography

As a communications professional, I specialize in telling stories and designing messages that mobilize audiences to learn and engage with some of the most consequential issue of our day, including climate change, environmental justice, and access to higher education. In the teams I lead and to which I contribute, I cultivate a culture of creativity, responsiveness, inclusion, and evidence-based practice.

Currently serving as the Communications Director for the Honors College at George Mason University, I craft stories that make vivid the value of our vibrant multidisciplinary learning community to prospective students, donors, community partners, and other stakeholders. Our communications encourage prospective students and stakeholders to prioritize educational experiences that emphasize student-led research, learning to pose good questions, and working with others who have very different backgrounds, experiences, and perspectives.

In the classroom, I draw on my experience as a professional communicator, challenging students to pursue the insights that emerge from communicating clearly about the methodological, conceptual, and rhetorical norms of their disciplinary, professional, and cultural discourse communities. My students develop their capacities to learn from, challenge, and collaborate with others whose training differs from their own. They examine the intersections between climate change and culture, participate in multidisciplinary seminars focused on individually-designed research and creative projects, and engage with their communities through experiential learning.

My background in academia prepares me to research and understand technical and nuanced issues, while my professional experience prepares me to translate this understanding into stories that reach broader audiences. Academic work has instilled in me a commitment to following the evidence, both when crafting stories and when developing communications plans. I am prepared to work across disciplines and professional communities and to situate my communication work within the broader cultural, political, and economic contexts that give it significance.

My dissertation research investigated the relationships between the discourses of “clean coal,” the political economy of responses to climate change, and the material practices and technologies used for pollution mitigation in the coal industry. As a scholar, I have previously published and presented about cultural and political economic aspects of the coal industry of Central Appalachia.