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I used to say, "oh I really like to sail." I went–when I was doing student teaching, I had this great mentor and he said to me, "you have to do something that you would never do normally. That when you're a teacher you have to step outside of your comfort zone every day and that's what you're asking kids to do." So he wouldn't let me be the advisor or join in like the theater club or things like that, which is my background was in, I studied drama high school drama. And he was the sailing instructor and he was like– and this is a public school so I did and I went and learned how to be a sailing instructor and every summer I went to the South of France with a group of high school kids. I would never do this now, but we would take 50 kids to the South of France for two weeks.

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I visited the campus, I was doing research in California and I walked onto campus and I saw that sign, "Change the world from here" and I took a selfie with the sign and I was totally like, one day I'm gonna work here.

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So my research is in equity and inclusion and I studied the experience of Black, Latino, and LGBTQ students in Jesuit High Schools. Why is it so difficult to get a Gay Straight Alliance, a supported environment club activity, in Catholic schools? Like why is that such an obstacle? Why do Black students appear to not be as successful as white students in our schools? Why do certain groups of students sit at the front of the class every time and certain groups of students sit at the back and what effect does that have? So, I used to do a lot of classroom observations and teacher evaluations and formation and it was when I started talking to students and to teachers about it that none of us had the answer and I realized that none of us had really in our training had the experience that said, in this moment in this classroom this is what I need to do.

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My goal is to really be an aspect of a part of a group of people who work to transform our educational leadership programs. The school of Ed, the department of leadership studies, has an extremely positive critical conscious pedagogy that I'm so happy to be a part of and so to embrace that within Catholic educational leadership, also within public educational, other religious traditions, and to understand what that means. Yes, I am gay and I have worked in Catholic schools. I did not come to us with an agenda of "I'm gonna be the LGBTQ advocate for Catholic educators," but since I arrived what has happened is several people have approached me the conversation, we've been approached by Catholic school leaders, and the conversation about how do we support our transgender students for example. There is a significant number of gay people in Catholic education and their tension, their challenge, their understanding, and their experience often makes them great educators.

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People find this we have great conversations and they're really intense but people are open to enjoying and I think it's because they're so passionate about what they do, so passionate that when people are doing what they love and loving what they do it just is such a different environment.

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