About

As a child, I told my parents I wanted to be either a famous actress or a Black Jack dealer on a cruise ship. Later, a prison reform advocate or civil rights attorney. In high school, I did stand-up comedy. In college, I wrote a play with incarcerated women. Only much later did the through-line become obvious: it had always been about Story, and I had always been a Storyteller.

The path to making that an actual career has been just as circuitous as my childhood dreams. I never went to film school, I don't have a journalism degree. Instead, I majored in English and Social Justice, continued my work with incarcerated women, and after graduation took my first job in New York City in the nonprofit sector before finally landing in production — first as an NBC Page, and eventually as a Supervising Producer and Documentary Director making content for HBO, Showtime, and others.

It's taken all of it — the long way around, the mentors, the rooms, the mistakes — to learn to tell stories the way I tell them now. Two Emmy Awards and 11 nominations later, I'm always learning.

Essential Storytelling is what came out of all of it — a methodology for human-centered storytelling that prioritizes both process and product. This is where I teach it.

You can find me teaching at Maine Media Workshops + College, Downtown Community Television Center, the Omega Institute, and others. I remain available for Black Jack nights, only with low buy-ins.