My work is guided by my commitment to helping cultivate a thriving, diverse K–12 teaching profession. To that end, my scholarship explores how educational reforms and the institutional and organizational conditions within schools and teacher education programs shape the K–12 teaching profession. In particular, I examine how conceptions of teaching—such as a moral calling, a profession, or labor—become institutionalized through policy and come to shape both teachers’ work and the design of teacher education programs. I also delve into the “black box” of policy implementation to investigate how individuals and organizations interpret, adapt, and even transform education policies before they hit the ground. To do this work, I employ qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methodologies, drawing on theoretical perspectives from organizational theory, political science, and sociological theories of race.

Currently, I am working on a range of projects focused on the design, implementation, and institutionalization of teacher policy. First, in work supported by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the Spencer Foundation, I am working with Pam Grossman and Sarah Schneider Kavanagh on a series of projects focused on the K–12 teaching profession. This work includes a landscape analysis of the teaching profession, a study on the role of private philanthropies and foundations in shaping teacher policy, a 50-state landscape scan of teacher policy, and a policy implementation study of states re-designing K–12 teacher roles. Second, in work supported by Public Agenda, I am leading a team studying the racial politics and policy implementation of Culturally Relevant and Sustaining Education competencies in Pennsylvania. This work draws attention to the role of teacher education programs as organizations and teacher educators as policy actors in shaping the implementation of such instructional policies.

I earned my Ph.D. in education policy from the University of Pennsylvania in 2024. As a graduate student, I was recognized as a 2023 National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellow, an Institute of Education Sciences Predoctoral Fellow, and a David L. Clark Scholar. My dissertation received the 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Award from AERA Division L (Educational Policy & Politics), the 2025 James D. Anderson Outstanding Dissertation Award from AACTE, and the 2025 Jolley Bruce Christman and Steven S. Goldberg Annual Award for Best Dissertation in Urban Education from the University of Pennsylvania. My research has also won awards from the AERA Organizational Theory SIG and the AERA School Effectiveness and School Improvement SIG.

As a researcher, I am deeply committed to bridging the divides between research, policy, and practice. Before beginning graduate school, I worked at the Learning Policy Institute as a research and policy assistant. I began my career as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Helsinki, where I studied Finland’s approaches to teacher education and professional development.

(*Here, I am paraphrasing Charles Payne: Payne, C. M. (2008). So much reform, so little change: The persistence of failure in urban schools (Vol. 8). Cambridge, MA: Harvard Education Press.)