— SELECTED EXPERIENCE
Campaigns, crisis, and
reputations built to last
A career across government, higher education, global health, and technology - each engagement shaped by the same commitment to communications that actually moves people.
BRAND STRATEGY - GOVERNMENT
San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency
of SF residents could name the agency responsible for transportation before the rebrand
<12%
of Muni riders didn't understand SFMTA's full scope of responsibility (2017 survey)
~50%
900K+
CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS - HIGHER EDUCATION
University of California Office of the President
students and staff across 10 campuses and 5 medical centers served by the communications framework
30
days to stand up the systemwide COVID-19 rapid-response website and playbook
THOUGHT LEADERSHIP - RESEARCH - EDTECH
Chegg | Center for Digital Learning
14
63
7
the exam-protection tool we helped drive into Chegg's product roadmap, allowing professors to take a proactive role in ensuring academic integrity was upheld
10
Giving San Francisco's most essential agency a brand worthy of its mandate
When COVID-19 arrived in early 2020, the University of California system faced a communications crisis with no precedent and no playbook. Campuses were closing, PPE was scarce, and a community of 500,000 students and 400,000 faculty and staff across 10 campuses and 5 medical centers needed clear, consistent, and rapidly updated information — across time zones, disciplines, and institutional cultures that don't always move in unison.
Working in-house at the UC Office of the President, we built the systemwide communications infrastructure from the ground up: a rapid-response website for real-time information dissemination, and a crisis playbook covering the full range of emerging issues — campus closures, remote learning transitions, and PPE access. Within 30 days, a complex, decentralized system was communicating with a single, coordinated voice during the most disruptive event in its modern history.
Chegg had more data on how college students actually learn than almost anyone in the sector. What it didn't have was a credible way to say so. A technology company selling study help to students is easy to dismiss the moment it starts talking about what's broken in higher education. Closing that gap meant building real infrastructure: original research, a name that signaled independence and rigor, and validators from inside the academy willing to put their names next to the work.
As founding Executive Director, I built Chegg's Center for Digital Learning to be that infrastructure. The Center now anchors a research library of 14 original studies, produced in partnership with Chegg.org, covering college affordability, student mental health, learning differences, contingent faculty, and the annual Global Student Survey. I recruited an Academic Advisory Board of university presidents and higher ed policy leaders, including former Hunter College President Ann Kirschner and former Southern New Hampshire University President Paul LeBlanc, along with a Student Advisory Council that keeps student voices in the room where the research gets shaped.
The research held up under outside scrutiny. A study on how U.S. colleges underpay and under-support contingent faculty compared with their counterparts in Canada was picked up by The Washington Post and The Hechinger Report, with reporters quoting me directly on what the data showed. The Center's public-facing arm, the Higher Ed Spotlight podcast, extended that credibility outward: 63 episodes hosted by education journalist Ben Wildavsky, featuring leaders like Arizona State University President Michael Crow and Wharton professor Ethan Mollick, doubling its projected download targets and landing on lists of the seven best higher education podcasts.
The result is a company that gets invited into the policy and institutional conversations shaping higher education's future, not just a vendor pitching into them.
original research studies published, covering topics including college affordability, student mental health, and AI in the classroom
episodes of the Higher Ed Spotlight podcast
Academic Advisory Board, alongside a dedicated Student Advisory Council
CRISIS COMMUNICATIONS - SPOKESPERSON - EDTECH
Chegg | Academic Relations
6+
national and international outlets, including Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, EdSurge, Teen Vogue, and The Guardian, that quoted her on the record on Chegg's approach to academic integrity
~200%
jump in questions submitted to Chegg after the start of the pandemic: the study she was called on to respond to, on the record, by name
Honor Shield
CORPORATE SPONSORSHIP - GLOBAL HEALTH
Pfizer & The Pfizer Foundation
100+
documentary photographers featured across the exhibition
cities on the national tour, including New York, Washington D.C., Houston, and Detroit
The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency manages everything that moves in the city: public transit, street infrastructure, parking, and taxi regulation. But its brand said none of that. The original mark — created through a design contest — had no meaningful connection to the agency or its work, and public perception research confirmed the gap: less than 12 percent of San Francisco residents could name the agency responsible for transportation, and nearly half of Muni riders didn't understand what SFMTA was responsible for.
We led a comprehensive brand refresh grounded in San Francisco's civic identity. The solution centered on a bold "M" drawn in the tradition of Walter Landor's iconic Muni worm — a letterform already beloved by San Franciscans — while extending the brand's visual language to cover SFMTA's full scope of work beyond transit. The rebrand launched in May 2018 and is now visible across the city. It remains in use today.
One voice for a university system - in crisis
Turning an ed-tech company into higher education's newest research institution
Defending a company's most controversial product without denying the problem
When the pandemic pushed millions of students online overnight, Chegg's homework-help platform became a flashpoint in a national debate about academic integrity. Questions submitted to the site jumped nearly 200 percent, and so did the criticism: that Chegg was, in plain terms, a cheating site. As Head of Academic Relations, I was the person named to answer for it, on the record, in the outlets read by every provost and dean in the country.
I didn't deny that the product could be misused. What I pushed back on was the oversimplification, and I stayed honest about where the company had fallen short: "We were not prepared for the pandemic and did not anticipate the way Chegg Study would be abused by those taking exams at home," I told Inside Higher Ed in 2021. That same candor shaped the product response. When professors pushed for a built-in answer delay that would have undercut the platform's value to genuine learners, I made the case against it directly to reporters, then helped drive an alternative into the roadmap: Honor Shield, which lets professors block specific exam questions during testing windows.
Staying on the record across Inside Higher Ed, The Chronicle of Higher Education, EdSurge, Teen Vogue, and The Guardian, on a story most companies go quiet on, kept Chegg in the conversation instead of hiding from it.
Turning a corporate sponsorship into a moral statement
In 2004, Pfizer and the Pfizer Foundation wanted to be more than a pharmaceutical company in the global fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. The challenge with corporate commitments to humanitarian causes is credibility — how do you demonstrate genuine advocacy rather than brand positioning? The answer was to build something that could stand on its own.
We conceived and executed a program built around A Day in the Life of Africa, a landmark photographic book featuring documentary work from more than 100 photographers. We developed a companion exhibition — launched at Grand Central Station in New York City, one of the most visible public spaces in the world — that brought the human face of the AIDS crisis directly to millions of passersby. The touring show traveled to 10 cities across the country, with a dedicated segment on the fight against HIV/AIDS in Africa. It positioned Pfizer and the Pfizer Foundation not as funders of a cause, but as authentic moral partners in the global health response.