Growing up outside of Philadelphia, I was drawn from a young age to thinking about cities, inequality, and public education. I went to college in Baltimore; stumbled upon the fascinating field of sociology; and realized that if I wanted to really understand cities, inequality, and schools, I’d need to think a lot more about housing, labor, and history. It was in college that I started taking classes on public policy, and, coupled with my history and political science courses, I became relatively obsessed with thinking about how policy and politics worked together (or, quite often, against one another.)
I’ve always loved journalism — I wrote and edited for my high school paper, managed a campus political journal while an undergraduate, and interned at several organizations throughout college — yet I still never thought I’d be able to make it in the field professionally as an adult. It just seemed too competitive, with an ever diminishing number of jobs. I figured I’d graduate and pursue something that otherwise combined my love for social-science research, history, talking to people, and communications. And so, when I was selected for a two year, early career public policy journalism fellowship out of college, I felt like I had really won the lottery. It’s been more than a decade since then, and I still can’t believe I get to spend my days doing this work. It’s my real honor, and I have only grown more certain over the years that we need trusted guides who can dig around and ask needed questions of those in power in order to help us understand what’s really going on. Voters need this kind of information if our democratic project stands a chance.
I joined Vox in 2022 and have spent a lot of time since then focused on housing, reproductive rights, homelessness, and child care. But over the course of my career I’ve written a lot about workplace issues, economics, education, and social activism, too. One thing that is clear to me is how connected these issues are. I never feel like research for one story won’t help me in some way better report a future article on a different topic. I’m thinking about these kinds of connections all the time, and they help me ask better questions.
Some of my favorite pieces I’ve written at Vox have looked at solutions to hard policy problems. I was proud of these features I wrote about America’s “after-school afterthought” and the merits of building more apartment buildings with one staircase instead of two. Two of my most-read pieces have blended my policy reporting with some more personal subject matter. I wrote an essay exploring what I called “millennial mom dread” and another essay about my journey back to volunteering after thinking it wasn’t going to make any difference. I was also so grateful to get to travel last year to Germany to report on what their decade-long experiment with universal child care is actually looking like for working mothers.
There’s no question that media has changed so much over the last 15 years. And I know there’s a lot more change to come. But because of the support of Vox Members, I’m able to continue to do this work. I’m excited about Vox’s commitment to innovating with text, video, and audio, and I look forward to bringing more independent journalism to you on all these platforms. If you would like to support this kind of reporting, please consider becoming a Vox member. I will do everything I possibly can to make it worth your investment.
