I am an assistant professor of political science at Holy Cross. I received my PhD in political science (with distinction) from Yale University in May 2025. While at Yale, I was affiliated with the Institution for Social and Policy Studies. I did my BA at Williams College, where I first fell in love with the purple liberal-arts colleges of Massachusetts.

I am chiefly interested in American presidential democracy, understanding the role of presidential leadership in America's system of separated powers. My current book project (revise and resubmit at Cambridge University Press) concerns the construction of presidents' domestic policy agendas at the beginning of their terms. It advances an agency-centered perspective on agenda construction that emphasizes self-assertion over conformity to external constraints. Portions of this work have appeared in Presidential Studies Quarterly and Evaluating the Obama Presidency: From Transformational Goals to Governing Realities (De Gruyter 2024). 

My last book, Congressional Expectations of Presidential Self-Restraint (co-authored with John A. Dearborn; Cambridge University Press, Elements in American Politics Series, 2025), explains how Congress has designed laws reliant on an assumption that presidents would respect statutory goals by declining to use their formal powers in ways that were legally permissible but contrary to stated congressional intent. A prior version of the project earned the 2025 MPSA Patrick J. Fett Award for the best paper on Congress and the presidency.

I am likewise in the early stages of two other book projects. One is about presidents' conceptions of their role and how those conceptions configure their governing. The second is a developmental account of congressional decline.

Thanks for visiting my page! I am always happy to discuss research and teaching, as well as the Philadelphia Eagles, the current Broadway season, and northern New England. I am the four-time champion of my Survivor fantasy league, and I was one pick away from a top-ten bracket nationally in the 2026 NCAA men's basketball tournament.