About

University Administrator by day. Knitter & Podcaster by night. Feminist Mom always.

I’ve always been the kind of person who asks questions — lots of questions — to anyone who will listen and answer. With a BA in Religious Studies from Northwestern University and an MA in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara (where I wrote a thesis on feminist witches), I’ve now turned my questioning to history where I dig deep into stories that aren’t getting enough attention.

By day I’m the Dean of Students in the Division of the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, where I have worked since 2004. I grew up in small-town Ohio and now live on the south side of Chicago with my husband, the two best kids in the world, and three cats (one of whom is twenty years old and deeply resentful the younger two).

I’m writing a memoir/biography about my grandmother, an indomitable woman who served as nurse in London during World War II, where she met my grandfather, an American soldier. After the war ended, they married in her hometown in England, and then she left behind everything and everyone she knew to move to the United States and raise four kids, along the way learning to love camping, building social service programs, and always always finding ways to make everyone around her laugh.

When I’m not writing, podcasting, or working you can find me with knitting needles in my hands. If I could knit and podcast at the same time I would.