Each piece of my work is intentionally curated - be it an essay, a performance piece, a class, or an opportunity to engage in dialogue - as a way to practice relationship-building across differences that fosters creativity and possibility.  I do this by tapping into my performance background (eleven years as a professional actress), my academic experience (particularly as a cultural geographer), and my time living and working in diverse contexts both nationally and internationally.  While the arts, in the broadest sense, provided the first lens for me to understand difference (broadly defined) and my own life, my educational and professional experiences have also infused my thinking with expanded rigor and vision.  I do not think that any one lens is necessarily better than the other – and why pick one way of engaging the world when you can have three? So, I choose to work from the intersection of all those ways of learning, practicing, and knowing ourselves and the world we live in.

All of my work grows out of a commitment to question conventional wisdom and reconsider long-held assumptions regarding the production, representation, and dissemination of knowledge about people, places, and ideas. We must revisit and revise the way we do things – the frameworks we use, the value we attach to particular kinds of knowledge, the forms of expression that have currency in decision-making arenas – in order to invite creativity and maximize the possibility for positive change.

Photo credit: Michael Estrada.