About Me

I am a social worker, abolitionist, and Associate professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities. My research centers youth power, which I define as young people’s ability to shape their own lives, communities, and the world around them. My work examines how institutions respond to conflict, harm, disability, and behavioral difference, with a particular focus on the ways carceral logics operate across systems.

I'm deeply committed to non-carceral responses to harm and mechanisms of healing, such as restorative and transformative approaches, truth and reconciliation processes, peace building, and conflict transformation. This commitment stems from my lived experiences as well as my work as a circle keeper, educator, human rights advocate, and organizer. 

In addition to my research, I have extensive experience as an instructor, mentor, facilitator, and public speaker across academic, community, and professional settings. I teach and collaborate across disciplines and contexts, and I value approaches to learning that are relational, participatory, and adaptable to local community needs and ways of knowing.

I work closely with youth, educators, practitioners, and community organizations on participatory and policy-engaged research designed to support collective accountability, reduce punitive responses, and build more just and humane systems. My methodological and theoretical commitments include Critical Race Theory, QuantCrit, disability justice,  and community-directed or community-engaged research.

Before entering academia, I worked across a range of community and social service settings, including youth homelessness services, working with HIV positive youth, housing support, grassroots organizing, and forensic social work in the New York City Family Court system. My early experiences as a peer counselor for homeless and runaway youth continue to shape both my scholarship and their approach to teaching, mentorship, and community partnerships.

As a mixed-race, first-generation scholar who experienced poverty, educational exclusion, homelessness, and systemic violence growing up, I approach research as both an intellectual and political project. I am committed to producing applied scholarship in a way that is accountable to those most impacted, and capable of influencing policy and institutional practice. Across my work, I ask what it would mean for social systems not simply to manage harm, but to become places grounded in care, dignity, belonging, and collective liberation.