Bio
I know several lives worth living.
Mary Oliver
While I am not the same Boroka as the 'viscera sucker of Zambales', I was born on the ancestral and unceded land of the Székelys of Transylvania. I spent my childhood under the shadow of a dictator, arriving to the United States as a political refugee.
To finance my undergraduate education, I tried my hand at multiple (often simultaneous) occupations. Some of my favorites were working in a bookstore and as a counselor of foster youth, though I also think fondly of the years I worked as a special education coordinator, factory worker, graphics designer, Chinese medicine doctor, and tech CEO.
Through all my adventures in work and life, I found myself turning to the social sciences to understand the larger structural forces shaping my world. Working with – and belonging to – marginalized populations led to the realization that my passion lies in socially responsible research and education.
I developed my academic skills on the ancestral and unceded land of the Chochenyo Ohlone, in the joint PhD Program in Sociology and Demography at the University of California, Berkeley.
Every life is inexplicable...
No matter how many facts are told, no matter how many details are given, the essential thing resists telling.
Paul Auster
