Where my curiosity began.

I grew up in Richmond, Indiana, where my mother, a lover of film, poetry, and books, encouraged me to look beyond the familiar and appreciate different people, cultures, and ways of thinking. My mother, my maternal grandfather, and a circle of African American women I call my “Black Pearls” helped instill a lasting belief in education and possibility.

I became the first in my family to earn a college degree. I studied French at Indiana University, spending my senior year in Strasbourg, France, and later earned a master’s degree in Intercultural Communication, specializing in French language and culture, at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

Learning across cultures.

Living in France and Germany, traveling internationally, and working with people from many backgrounds broadened my understanding of identity, belonging, and human experience. My career in international affairs, education, and leadership development has included work with nonprofit organizations, professional associations, government agencies, and institutions across Africa and the Middle East.

Over more than three decades, I have designed and led educational, fellowship, and professional development initiatives, often focused on expanding access and opportunity for people underrepresented in their fields.

Finding origins and reconstructing lives.

My interest in origins and connection also led me to genealogy. For more than thirty years, I have researched family histories, with particular interests in African American ancestry, slavery and emancipation, migration, free Black communities, and the use of DNA evidence to address questions that historical records alone cannot resolve.

My own family research has taken me into histories of enslavement and migration in Tennessee, Kentucky, and Georgia; communities in North Carolina; and free Black settlements in southern Indiana. I bring that same attention to evidence, context, and individual lives to the families and communities whose histories I investigate.

My work has also included genetic genealogy initiatives involving unidentified individuals, family reconnection, and historical identification. I serve on the Board of Directors of the National Genealogical Society and on the leadership team of the Midwest African American Genealogy Institute.

Stories through the lens.

I am also a photographic artist. My photography explores culture, everyday life, and the Black experience, and my work has appeared in exhibitions in the United States and internationally. In 2008, I served as the official photographer for the President of Mali during his visit to Washington, DC.

Whether I am working with historical records, DNA evidence, or a camera, I am drawn to the ways individual lives become part of a larger story.

Always curious.

My interests extend to art, global cultures, food, music, memoirs, and storytelling. Those interests continue to shape how I see the world and how I approach the histories entrusted to my care.