Bio

I was born in Austin, and while I’ve loved getting to travel and experience different parts of the world, this city will always be where my heart is.

After attending kindergarten and first grade in the public school system, I was homeschooled (and then unschooled) from second grade onward, and my family belonged to the Austin Area Homeschoolers group. I grew up with a richly diverse social and educational life — I played soccer, performed in theatre productions, took piano lessons, competed in chess tournaments, went to dances, volunteered with local nonprofits, had informal lessons in French and Spanish, took community college classes in such subjects as chemistry and US history, and spent some time as the editor of the homeschool group’s newsletter and its annual yearbook.  With my parents and my brother and sister, I also had the opportunity to travel around the United States and see various museums, historical landmarks, and national parks.

Thanks to a music scholarship, I attended college at Southwestern University in Georgetown, TX.  I graduated summa cum laude with a music major and English minor.

I did some more traveling during college and in the year that followed; I volunteered with Cross-Cultural Solutions in Peru, Morocco, and Costa Rica, and I lived in England with my sister for a semester while we worked odd jobs and explored the country. When we returned to the US, I was accepted to Teach For America and completed the initial training in Los Angeles before moving to Minneapolis to start teaching fourth grade at a charter school.

My passion for educational reform turned out to be incompatible with my duties as a classroom teacher, and I resigned from the program pretty early on, but I continued to live in Minneapolis for the rest of the school year so that I could visit my former students as a voluntary mentor. This experience certainly shaped my teaching philosophy and my understanding of institutionalized education.

Soon after I moved back to Austin, I spent a few years teaching piano full-time, then shifted my focus to real estate. I continue to enjoy working in both fields, guiding my clients and students to achieve their goals, and occasionally advising homeschooling/unschooling families as well. Eventually I’d like to start an alternative school that functions as a resource center for families who are looking for a flexible, intentional education model.

Besides music/education/real estate, my interests include sustainable farming and local food, feminism and gender criticism, video games, yoga, handcrafts, politics, writing, and reading good novels/biographies/essays whenever I can.