Before,
Most notably, I spent every-second of almost 2 years building some of the country’s most-trusted COVID-19 datasets for the COVID Tracking Project at The Atlantic, which became the backbone of federal, state, and local COVID-19 policy in the United States. Our work was used by government agencies, and in over 80,000 news reports and 2,000 academic articles, and was awarded the Sigma Delta Chi Award for Specialized Journalism Site, a Sigma Award for Data Journalism, and a New York University American Journalism Online Award for Best Data Visualization.
I’m also an alum of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Biden-Harris Administration, Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting, AppDynamics & Cisco Systems, Education Week, and a former 3-time intern at The Investigative Reporting Workshop.
I hold a BS in Data Science & International Studies, and a MS in Data Science, from American University, in Washington D.C, where I fell in love with mathematics and defied academic norms.
I was one of American University’s first BS Data Science graduates, where I took mostly graduate courses to complete my undergraduate degree. My master’s thesis (😅) used machine learning and mathematical models to detect inequalities in U.S. federal government data practices.
Right now,
I am the Professorial Lecturer of Computational & Quantitative Methods in the journalism program at American University’s School of Communication.
In American University’s 130-year history, I am one of its youngest professors. Imposter syndrome is second nature. I am definitely not qualified for this job, but sometimes traditional qualifications should be thrown out the window.
I am most proud of my students, who have gone on to work at newsrooms like the Washington Post, The LA Times, the Center for Public Integrity, and other local and nonprofit newsrooms.
💛
I am kind-of an underdog.
I taught myself how to code while working overnight front-desk shifts as a Resident Assistant when I was 19. American University didn’t have an undergraduate Data Science major, so I became the first. I have never taken a journalism class, but now teach it.
Who I am, and what I represent 🏳️⚧️, makes me a better educator, data scientist and human.