I was raised in Midland, Michigan and attended Midland High School and dove right into extracurriculars and volunteering at the Alden B. Dow Home & Studio.   From 2011-2012, I became a long-term Rotary International Youth Exchange student and lived in Ankara, Turkey. 

When I returned home from abroad I graduated from Wayne State University with a dual degree in Theater and Peace and Conflict Studies.  When I graduated, a lot of folks began wondering where on earth I was headed. 

I worked as a Research Assistant at the Center for Peace and Conflict Studies at Wayne State and was awarded a Reverse Exchange Fellowship through the US State Department’s Young Leaders of the America’s Initiative (YLAI). Through YLAI, I traveled to Bogota, Colombia to witness Somos CaPAZes, the largest youth peace education non-profit in the country, in action.  At 23, I brought those ideas back to Metro-Detroit established partnerships to implement a localized peace education program, Peace Culture, in after school programs. We proudly served over 200 Metro-Detroit youth and became a sponsored project of Allied Media Projects. 

In 2019-2020, I received a Rotary International Peace Fellowship to represent Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, CA as I completed my MA in International Development Management at the University of Bradford in Bradford, UK.  In March 2020, at the height of the pandemic, my family and I left the UK and landed in Northern Michigan.  My husband and I were born in Traverse City and “boomerang-ed” right back home.   After five years of working with non-profit organizations, two international fellowships, and a year of learning from Rotary Charities of Traverse City and designing programming for Arrowhead Incubator, I am thrilled to join the team at Grow Benzie.

My family and I dig being able to call this beautiful region home.

I live for Sunday dinners, dancing with my daughter, and playing extremely geeky board games with my husband. To learn more, check out my LinkedIn profile here…