About me

About Me

During my first year at university, my favorite professor nominated me to be an editor at the student writing center. I was honored because I was a geology major, after all. Helping other students write better became the highlight of my week. My editing experiences spanned student essays by English language learners to doctorate dissertations by PhD candidates in the fisheries and wildlife and department. The power of words changed my life. I swapped geology for English and dove into the arts of writing, rhetoric, and literature.

Despite earning three degrees, I could tell I wasn’t finished learning. I wanted to find a way to combine my love of words with my passion for the details of meaning, so I returned to university as a graduate student in linguistics. Around this time, thanks to the internet, I discovered my long-lost best friend from fifth grade, who happened to be teaching in Japan.

Me in 2009 at the top of Mount Fuji. It's freezing before dawn, even in the middle of August!

After graduating, I found myself on a plane headed to Osaka. As a university instructor, I enjoyed teaching writing classes the most: my students may have been shy to speak, but they had strong, unique voices on paper. In my free time, I volunteered to edit articles for the Japan Association for Language Teaching.

Four years down the road, I needed a change, so I moved to Istanbul, Turkey, and I began teaching high school students. The change from university teaching to high school required a steep learning curve. Three years later when I moved to Dubai, UAE, I knew the time had come to return to editing. Since 2016 I’ve been working as a freelance editor, helping independent authors, small businesses, and writing enthusiasts shape their words into clear, coherent, and concise stories.

My first visit in 2011 to the Roman Library of Celsus near the Turkish city of Selçuk. I've always loved books!

These days I spend my time moving between worlds. Some weeks I’m on fantastic adventures in space or get transported to destinations where dragons are the true threat. Other weeks find me jet-setting around the world in cosmopolitan stories set in the biggest cities on earth. I love when I get tossed back in history and see famous events unfold from a fresh perspective. Sometimes I experience our world facing a future that unfolded vastly different from our current trajectory. From time to time, I get the chance to delve into the real world when I’m editing articles about history or the finer points of the English language.

In August of 2019, I relocated to London, and I’m so glad you’ve found me doing what I love in a city I always dreamed of living in. I know how lucky I am!