Biography

I was born in Washington, D.C. in 1978 to loving parents. I grew up in a progressive co-housing community that fought for social justice issues in the nation’s capital. This environment fostered in me a genuine appreciation for racial and cultural diversity, as well as a desire to always serve others who are less fortunate. My parents helped run a homeless shelter. Some of my earliest memories are related to this service work of providing care for people in need.

During high school, I discovered my fondness for the open road. As soon as I could drive, I headed out west to explore the country. During my travels, I fell in love with Arizona, especially the people I met on the Navajo Reservation. I would later return this land during my college years to lead a fundraising effort for an impoverished community on the reservation. After graduation, I attended a college with a focus on international studies. During the summer after my freshman year, I completed a summer service trip to Abidjan, Cote D’Ivoire. Next to studying French with my classmates, I also lived in a small village north of Abidjan working on a palm tree plantation. This powerful experience opened up my worldview and gave me a new understanding of the extreme hardship people face in West Africa. During my junior year, I enrolled in a student exchange program studying literature in Hungary. Here I fell in love with the Hungarian language and culture, as well as a Hungarian woman. After finishing my undergraduate studies, I moved back to Hungary, which is where my teaching career would begin and continue for the next four years. I also got married here, and then along came my first two children.

In 2005, we decided to move back to the States because I felt called to return to graduate school and spend more time with my family. Next to teaching in different public school in Maryland, I completed my MEd in Instructional Technology and began to develop my philosophy of teaching 21st century students. My fifteen-years of teaching experience internationally has given me a keen awareness of what works with students of the digital age. I have an innovative, outside-of-the-box approach to learning that focuses on experiential and project-based methods utilizing technology. I believe that my expertise in instructional technology along with my rich experiences using technology for research and learning help me engage students who are more and more tech savvy. I am an independent, highly driven educator who is also a team player, and I always get along with many different types of people. I have strong leadership skills that I have cultivated over the years serving as chair of different Language Arts departments and the director of a non-profit educational organization. My teaching and leadership experiences in both traditional, brick-and-mortar classrooms and in non-traditional learning environments make me a unique candidate for teaching in international schools.

After more than ten years of teaching in America, in 2017 I moved to Hungary with my children and Hungarian wife to be closer to her family. I currently work as an education technology consultant, test developer, native English-speaking lecturer, and copy editor at the University of Pecs' Foreign Language Center.