About the Author

Foreign Service Day, May 2022 – Washington, DC

I was born and raised in northern California. I graduated from San Diego State University in 2001 with a bachelor of liberal arts and sciences in psychology. I am an alumna of Kappa Delta Sorority, Beta Rho chapter where I was elected vice president of standards my senior year.

I served as a Peace Corps Volunteer in North Macedonia between 2002 and 2004 in the environmental education and management sector. In 2006, I earned a master of international relations from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.

Afterwards, I relocated to Washington, DC and worked for the Congressional Youth Leadership Council as a logistics officer. From 2006 to 2010, I worked at the Voice of America (VOA), first as a program assistant and later as executive assistant to the VOA director. I also co-coordinated VOA broadcasts from the 2008 Republican and Democratic National Conventions as deputy logistics and credentialing officer.

From 2010 to 2014, I joined the Paul D. Coverdell Peace Corps Headquarters as special assistant to the regional director for Europe, Mediterranean and Asia, and completed the Leadership Development Academy, Peace Corps’ prestigious 18-month professional development program the agency targets towards future senior leadership. I was later pulled up as special assistant to the associate director for the Office of Volunteer Recruitment and Selection.

In the summer of 2014, my dream of becoming an American diplomat came true when I received my invitation to join the United States Foreign Service. I have served as a consular officer at U.S. Embassy Tashkent, Uzbekistan; as a consular and political officer at U.S. Embassy Canberra, Australia; and as deputy American Citizens Services chief at U.S. Consulate General Ciudad Juárez, México.

My current, fourth tour is a domestic assignment to Washington, DC, where I work on international parental child abduction cases in the Bureau of Consular Affairs’ Office of Children’s Issues, which functions as the U.S. Central Authority for the Hague Abduction Convention. My next assignment will be as deputy consular chief at U.S. Embassy Rangoon, Burma, in 2025.

I am married and have two adult stepdaughters. I love science fiction, film, hiking, the outdoors, long solo road trips, and the profound bewilderment of international travel and life abroad.

As of February 2024, I have still only visited 29 countries and 47 U.S. states…so there’s a whole world to see! If the Foreign Service or joining the Peace Corps is your dream, please never self-adjudicate out or give up.

Top, L to R: Aral Sea, Uzbekistan (2017); Arlington, VA (2014); Sydney, Australia (2018)

Middle, L to R: Truckee, CA (2017); Moscow, Russia (2016); Canberra, Australia (2018)

Bottom, L to R: St. Petersburg, Russia (2017); Hyderabad, India (2016); Seoul, South Korea (2017)