“My family and my experiences in Ward 2 have shaped who I am today. I am ready to give back to my community so that every child growing up in Ward 2 has the same opportunities I did.”

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I am an Ann Arbor native and have lived in this city since 1993. My parents chose this city, having left their hometowns of Detroit, MI and Mount Vernon, NY to complete graduate degrees at U of M, where they met. They felt Ann Arbor would be a great place to raise their son, and they bought a house in a diverse block in the King School neighborhood. From my dad, I learned the importance of state service. In his career at the Center for Forensic Psychiatry, he evaluated hundreds of defendants, making sure attorneys, judges and juries had the expertise to decide criminal cases. From my mom, I learned courage in the face of adversity, and although her medical career was halted by illness, she did not let that stop her from forging strong connections with her friends and neighbors and being active in her church community.

I am a product of Ann Arbor schools. I attended King School and Greenhills School, both proudly within Ward 2. In fifth grade, I joined the Boychoir of Ann Arbor, getting to perform in local spaces, such as the Michigan Theater. At Greenhills, I got involved in the service learning program. I tutored and was a camp counselor at the Green Baxter Community Center, an affordable housing community, a few blocks from my house. Green Baxter has been home to many first generation Americans and creating more communities like it in Ann Arbor would help us live up to our values of inclusivity, supporting our neighbors, and expanding opportunity.

Throughout my life, I saw the ways that government can be a force for good, from subsidized lunch for fellow students at King, to fiscal stimulus that righted the economy during my early college years. Moreover, the work of Democrats and the labor movement for black and working people was always clear to me, given that my grandparents benefitted from the integration of the federal workforce and union membership. It’s no accident then, that as a junior in high school, I started working on the Obama campaign. I realized that politics isn’t just about high minded ideals, it’s about relationships and conversations at the front doors of neighbors. It’s why I chose to be the canvas chair of Ward 2, working with a group of volunteer leaders, some more than 30 years my senior, to make positive political change.

My experiences growing up in Ann Arbor bolstered my application to Yale, where I graduated with a B. A. in Economics in 2014. While in college, I worked for Progressive Pipeline (formerly SNAP PAC), the largest student-run political action committee in the U.S. While I was there, I co-designed our annual development strategy, and by using a web-based fundraising approach, we significantly reduced overhead. I also directed a recruitment strategy that increased the diversity of the applicant pool by 65 percent. I returned to Ann Arbor to be closer to family, and got a job at the American Mathematical Society where I’ve refined the system to present and store institutional information for authors of STEM papers in the database we publish, MathSciNet.

An integral part of my life in Ann Arbor has been St. Andrew’s church, which my family joined shortly after returning to Ann Arbor. St. Andrew’s sparked a love of the arts, getting me involved in theater at an early age. It also gave me a space to serve my community, working in St. Andrew’s Breakfast Program that provides breakfast for anyone who needs it in Ann Arbor 365 days a year. Starting in middle school and continuing until the pandemic reduced volunteer crews, I have been a regular volunteer.

In 2021, I was elected to the Vestry, the administrative board of the church. We rose to the challenges posed by COVID-19, approving necessary investment to improve AV capabilities and WiFi, so that we could livestream services, and making tough decisions on reopening to ensure our parish would protect our most vulnerable congregants. This gave me confidence working on a board, lending my voice to discussions of treasurer’s reports and our financial future, but also to discussions of sensitive issues with the congregation, such as our decision to hang a black lives matter sign.