I hold a Ph.D. in Teacher Education and Learning Sciences with a concentration in the Learning Design and Technology from North Carolina State University. Before joining WestEd as a Research Associate in Learning and Technology, I served as the Director of Technology Programs at the Friday Institute for Educational Innovation. I have extensive professional experience as both a STEM educator and a developer of educational technology software. My current work encompasses research and program evaluation for studies related to computer science and data science education. I also provide expert consultation on projects that benefit from educational data mining and learning analytics techniques, such as natural language processing.

As an educator at the Shodor Education Foundation, I served education efforts for initiatives like Computing MATTERS, the Blue Waters project, and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE) project. I have designed and delivered technology-focused professional development for educators and summer programs for students across North Carolina and the United States. As Deputy Director for the Community Engagement and Enrichment subgroup of the XSEDE project, I coordinated education, outreach, and training programs related to high performance computing and its applications. Additionally, in my capacity coordinating the Student Internship Program for Blue Waters I oversaw the development of open-source, online curriculum modules aimed at preparing undergraduate students for the growing complexity of advanced computing paradigms. During this time, I also improved the program’s undergraduate internship recruitment efforts and achieved an increase from less than 20% to almost 70% inclusion and participation of underserved, marginalized students.

As a senior software engineer, I built my expertise in developing personalized learning platforms which prompted me to pursue my doctorate. At NC State, I served as a research assistant on several projects funded by the National Science Foundation and the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund. My work there focused on the development of students’ computational thinking skills and designing technology-enhanced learning environments like makerspaces. I have collaborated with education researchers at the Friday Institute and NC State’s Center for Educational Informatics. I also helped deliver professional development for the Learning Analytics in STEM Education Research (LASER) Institute.