I am a versatile communicator and strategist specializing in education storytelling. I craft narratives that help schools and universities articulate their values and spotlight their communities with empathy, clarity, and purpose.My work is shaped by more than a decade of teaching at both the K–12 and college levels, as well as extensive communications experience in advancement and educational leadership. Before moving into communications full-time, I earned a Ph.D. in Film Studies and taught undergraduate film history and aesthetics — training that honed my understanding of how narratives function across words, images, and sound, and sharpened my ability to uncover compelling, resonant stories.Having partnered with students, parents, faculty, staff, administrators, donors, alumni, and community members, I bring a uniquely comprehensive view of the educational ecosystem, from public and independent schools to top-tier colleges and universities. Across all of these settings, I’ve learned that nothing creates connection or amplifies impact more effectively than a story well told.When I’m not at work, I write longform film criticism and personal essays at Material Ghosts, my Substack newsletter. You can also find me on Letterboxd or reach me at the email address below.Thanks for stopping by!
Select Audio & Video Production
Moving The Needle: A Tribute to Michael E. Tennenbaum
Georgia Tech | 2025 | Role: Editor
For a campus birthday celebration honoring one of Georgia Tech’s most generous donors, I was asked to produce a tribute video using interview footage I hadn’t shot, based on questions I hadn’t written. Working solely with the subject’s answers, I set out to shape an emotional narrative around his long history of philanthropy.To give the piece a clear arc, I dug into the Institute’s archives for materials from his student years and paired them with contemporary b-roll from across campus. The result is a story about how Georgia Tech shaped him, and why that experience inspired a lifetime of giving back.
Stewardship Video for Scholarship Match Challenge
Georgia Tech | 2025 | Roles: Producer, Videographer, Interviewer, Editor
For a stewardship video aimed at donors who contributed to a scholarship match challenge, I was initially asked to weave together short interviews with four student recipients. During production, however, one student’s story stood out immediately. I recommended shifting to a slightly longer, single-subject piece centered on him — a student from rural Georgia who arrived at Georgia Tech against long odds. His experience offered a compelling, human illustration of the transformative impact of scholarship support.
Building Bridges: GLISI 2022 Annual Report
GLISI | 2023 | Roles: Producer, Videographer, Interviewer, Editor
Instead of GLISI’s usual print annual report, I pitched a three-segment video series that would more vividly capture our impact on leadership development in Georgia’s K–12 schools. Working solo, I traveled across the state to film and interview 18 partners, participants, and staff, overseeing the entire production from concept to completion.
We're Still Here: An Audio Documentary
Self-initiated Project | 2019 | Role: Co-Producer (with John McKerley)
Student housing has become big business in college towns like Chapel Hill, North Carolina — and investment-driven development can leave longtime residents feeling powerless in the face of rapid change. In this piece, Kathy Atwater, a lifelong resident of Chapel Hill’s historically Black Northside neighborhood, describes how community members organized through the Marian Cheek Jackson Center to defend their homes and their history.
Produced at the Center for Documentary Studies’ Audio Documentary Summer Intensive at Duke University, July 6–13, 2019.
Select Articles
Fellowship Recipient Driven by Curiosity and Passion
Georgia Tech | 2025 | Campaign Quarterly
A chance encounter with a robotics Ph.D. student who’d appeared in an earlier campaign video led me to a remarkable discovery: he had simultaneously been working toward dual master’s degrees in aerospace engineering and computer science — while also playing in the Yellow Jackets marching band and pursuing his pilot’s license. I developed a profile of this remarkable, insatiably curious student. Click here to read.
Georgia Tech | 2024 | Campaign Quarterly
A retrospective on Georgia Tech’s CREATE-X program, which helped transform the Institute into one of the nation’s top startup campuses. I interviewed Institute leadership, key donors, and current and former students to tell the story of a game-changing entrepreneurial initiative. Click here to read.
Donors Step Up for Full Steam Ahead
Georgia Tech | 2024 | Campaign Quarterly
To help announce Full Steam Ahead, a new Athletics initiative within Georgia Tech’s comprehensive campaign, I wrote a piece outlining the vision, scope, and donor momentum behind the effort. The article introduced the program to the Tech community and highlighted the capital projects it will make possible. Click here to read.
Press Release: Hidden Heroes Campaign 2022
GLISI | 2022 | Press Release
Select Film Criticism
Material Ghosts: On Film & Memory is my Substack newsletter. Published on an irregular basis, it aims for the type of criticism that I always wanted to write but that would have been unthinkable in my former academic context, namely, longform prose that blends close, sometimes shot-by-shot analysis, with impressionistic writing and personal reflections.
No Film Has Captured Southern Ambivalence Better Than Junebug
Material Ghosts | 2025
Unconventionally structured and blending close analysis with personal essay, this essay explores that 2005 film that made Amy Adams famous in light of the rankling emotional wounds we suffer at the expense of things left unsaid. Click here to read.
Three Shots (and Oh So Many Echoes): Paranoid Park
Material Ghosts | 2024
How Gus Van Sant packs decades' worth of cinematic allusions and obsessions into one deceptively simple scene. Click here to read.
Searching for a Southern John Hughes
Material Ghosts | 2024
A moderately exhaustive answer to my own question: Have I ever seen adolescent life in the American South depicted on screen in a way consonant with my own lived experience? Click here to read.
One Perfect Scene: The Spectacular Now
Material Ghosts | 2024
It's one thing to describe being drunk and in love. It's quite another to make the viewer feel it. Click here to read.
Select Scholarly Essays
The Building and Blurring of Worlds: Sound, Space, and Complex Narrative Cinema
World Building: Transmedia, Fans, Industries | Amsterdam Univ. Press | 2018
Considers how sound "fills in" cinematic worlds by conveying what is beyond the edges of the frame. Click here to read.
The Unheard Voice in the Sound Film
Cinema Journal | 2013
Much has been written on the "disembodied voice" in film. But what about the inverse? Winner of the 2012 Society for Cinema & Media Studies' Student Writing Award. Click here to read.
Mental Landscapes: Bazin, Deleuze, and Neorealism
Cinema Journal | 2013
Teasing out the "supernatural" realism in André Bazin's thought by way of David Gordon Green's George Washington. Click here to read.
The Sound of Uncertain Voices: Mumblecore and the Interrogation of Realism
Cinephile | 2011
One of the very first scholarly considerations of Mumblecore, the microbudget film movement from which Greta Gerwig, The Duplass Brothers, and Lena Dunham emerged in the early 2000s. Click here to read.
Book Review: The Off-Screen by Eyal Peretz
The New Review of Film & Television Studies | 2018
Collateral
Postcard Front
Postcard Back
Direct Mail | January 2023
Designed a dual-sided direct mail postcard to promote GLISI's summer leadership bootcamp. Developed layout, typography, messaging, and final print-ready files to ensure clarity, visual appeal, and audience engagement.
Social Media Content
The Georgia Leadership Institute for School Improvement (GLISI) is a nonprofit focused on "building excellent and equitable schools" through leadership training for K-12 educators. As Marketing & Communications Manager from 2022–2023, I planned, created, and managed the organization’s social media content. Below is a selection of posts that reflect both my execution and the communication strategy behind them.
Juneteenth Office Closure Announcement | June 2022
For an education nonprofit’s social channels, a routine office-closure notice presented an opportunity to offer historical context to our audience of K–12 leaders.I paired the announcement with a line from “Lift Every Voice and Sing” and linked to reputable resources (NPR; Smithsonian’s NMAAHC) outlining the song’s cultural significance and the history behind Juneteenth’s federal recognition.The goal was not advocacy, but clarity — offering fact-based, mission-aligned information at a time when DEI-related topics were being mischaracterized in public discourse. Click here to view.
"Partner Stories" Social Media Promos | Summer 2022
To market our leadership development program, I sought to let its impact speak through the people who knew it best — our graduates.Using audio pulled from a Zoom conversation with a former participant, I created a series of short promotional videos highlighting her experience and the program’s influence on her career and district.Produced using headliner.app, the “Partner Stories” series repurposed existing assets into authentic, sharable content that reinforced trust and demonstrated real-world outcomes. Click here to view.
Real-Time Event Coverage | July 2022
During a workshop where GLISI was a participant (not the convener), I shared four real-time photos of a powerful group exercise.Part of our social strategy was to share content that was genuinely meaningful and useful to our audience — not just promotional. Posts like this helped position GLISI as an active participant in the broader conversation about effective leadership and learning, offering insights that educators could apply in their own contexts. Click here to view.