I have a bachelors degree in Psychology and in Environmental Studies from the University of Pennsylvania (UPENN), and a masters degree and PhD in Anthropology from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). I am a native of Philadelphia, but have spent considerable time living in Costa Rica, Germany, Hungary, and the Netherlands. 

I have taught bachelor and masters level courses at Radboud University, Nijmegen in the Netherlands. I was a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Animal Behaviour at Bielefeld University in Germany during 2018-2023 thanks to support from the Bielefeld Young Researchers Fund (2018-2019) and a Humboldt Research Fellowship for Postdoctoral Researchers (2020-2023).

In my graduate and postdoctoral work, I have collaborated closely with the Lomas Barbudal Monkey Project, to study the social dynamics and development of wild, white-faced capuchin monkeys in Costa Rica. Much of my work involves collaboration with the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology (MPI-EVA). 

In the past, I have also worked with bacteria, zebra finches, brown-headed cowbirds, and transgenic rats. My work has focused on developmental aspects of sociality in wild capuchins. This includes research on potential mechanisms of kin bias and/or kin recognition and the use of methods from quantitative genetics to disentangle genetic and non-genetic influences on phenotypes.