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).

Thoughout my career, I have worked 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.

Since 2024, I am a postdoctoral research associate in Lauren Brent's group at the University of Exeter looking at social modifiers of aging in rhesus macaques. This work is done in collaboration with the Caribbean Primate Research Center.