My sheer enthusiasm for language started with wanting to know how you spell the letter H, teaching myself to read, and wanting to learn Spanish to talk to the other kids at my daycare. My hobby of learning languages helps in being a linguist and doing my fieldwork, as well as being the exception proving the rule that not all linguists are polyglots.

My love of language continued to be nurtured with training in creative writing at Denver School of the Arts, coursework in communicative disorders and as many languages as I could take at the University of Redlands, and a PhD with coursework and research across linguistics, psychology, and speech and hearing sciences at the University of Arizona. I learned even more about speech perception and production during a postdoc at the University of Oregon. I also found a love of teaching, which I was able to use at universities across the US—a lot of my most cherished memories are in classrooms or in office hours with students!

In all cases, my interest has been in how to communicate with other people: through storytelling, in a new language, while rehabilitating brain injuries, to exhausted and overworked grant proposal reviewers, or how to get abstract, theoretical concepts across to students. I've built this interest into a post-academic career in conversation design and UX writing.

I'm of the opinion that someone's career is the least interesting part of a person, so I make sure to have too many hobbies to keep track of. At various points in my life I've been a yoga teacher and practitioner (I love ashtanga, vinyasa, and yin yoga); I taught myself to knit, crochet, quilt, and cross stitch; I lift heavy things and stick people with swords for fun; and I love a good cup of tea with the latest horror/sci-fi/fantasy novel that has captured my attention. My writing of many genres has been published—whether academic research, introductory textbooks, poetry, or short stories—and at any given time I have other pieces of writing bouncing around in my head. Most importantly, though, I'm a longtime, diehard fan of the Colorado Avalanche—and will happily keep you posted on how they're doing from October through May.

After growing up in Denver, living in southern California, Tucson, the Netherlands, Malta, rural Pennsylvania, and rainy Eugene, Colorado called me back home. I've spent a lot of my free time re-learning how to bake at altitude and how to grow a garden when it could snow as late as mid-June and as soon as early October. While I've taken beautiful hikes everywhere I've lived, I love retracing my childhood steps along trails in the Front Range. One of my bucket list items is to visit every state park in Colorado—as an adult, since my outdoorsy parents took me to many before I formed many memories!

Majestic Lions Head at Staunton State Park (April 2026)

After a successful dissertation defense! (July 2018)

Artemis Cat loves this blanket that was made by her tío Peter.

Maltese researchers at the Azure Window in Dwejra! (June 2014; Photo courtesy of Mel Aquilina)

The last bits of fall color at Golden Gate Canyon State Park (October 2025)