In one of those stars I shall be living. In one of them I shall be laughing. And so it will be as if all the stars were laughing, when you look at the night sky.
- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
My Beginnings
Education
returned home to Colorado, where I finished my B.A. in Africana Studies with a minor in Multicultural Anthropology at the University of Northern Colorado (UNCO). While attending UNCO, I completed research as a Ronald E. McNair Scholars Research Program, a process and opportunity that put me on the pathway to graduate school and the academy. I collected in-depth interview data on the lived experiences of Black women professors and lawyers, specifically focused on skin-tone biases in their workplaces. This research project culminated in two peer reviewed articles, and an undergraduate research award. The research process gave me the confidence to pursue an MA/PhD in sociology, like some of my favorite Black Feminist scholars, including Dr. Patricia Hill Collins.
After graduating from UNCO, I moved to Austin, Texas where I began (and completed) an M.A./PhD. in Sociology at the University of Texas (UT). As both an undergraduate at UNCO and a graduate student at UT, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to study abroad. As an undergraduate, I studied Multicultural Anthropology and Turkish in Istanbul, Turkey, over a summer; and as graduate student, and Teaching Assistant, I had the pleasure of being part of a May-mester study abroad program in Leeds, England focused on Sport and English Society. Both experiences have shaped the ways that I understand the larger social world.
After finishing my PhD in Sociology, “Eating Together: Race, Social Relationships, and Food Practices Among College Educated Adults,” in 2018 at UT, I started as a Presidential Pathways Post-doctoral fellow at Virginia Tech (VT) in Blacksburg, Virginia (2018-2019). As a post-doc, I published a paper based on my dissertation data titled Eat to Live, Don’t Live to Eat: Black Men, Masculinity, Faith and Food, in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health. I remined in the post-doc for a year before joining the department as an Assistant Professor (2019-2022)
I
started college at the University of Pittsburgh, after finishing high school in Pullman, Washington. From Pittsburgh, I
Professional History
I
began my tenure as an Assistant Professor at Virginia Tech in 2019, where I remained until 2022. I taught classes including Introduction to Africana Studies; Plantation Politics: The Black
Sport Experience; Black Feminisms: Black Girl Magic, and the Sociology of Race and Racism. I also wrote and submitted a book proposal for what grew into my first solo published monograph, Say Her Name: Centering Black Feminism and Black Women in Sport (2025, Rutgers University Press).
Following my tenure at Virginia Tech (VT) I applied for a job in the Department of Sociology at the University of Cincinnati (UC). As a junior scholar I contributed service to my academic department, college and the discipline of sociology broadly. Specifically, I served as an advisor and mentor on MA and PhD committees, preliminary exam committees, as a member of the Executive Board of the North American Society for the Sociology of Sport; and a as reviewer for articles, book proposals, and full monographs.
In 2026, I was tenured and promoted to the rank of Associate Professor, in the University of Cincinnati Department of Sociology, where I continue to remain an affiliate of both the Africana Studies, and Women’s, Gender, Sexuality Studies programs.
As an Associate Professor, I continue to research, teach, and serve in the areas of race/ethnicity; gender; sport; girlhood; education, media and food studies. My research agenda as well as my teaching pedagogy are both shaped by Black feminist and (ratchet) womanist principles. My scholarly research can be found in peer-review journals including, Communication & Sport, Sociology of Sport, Race and Social Problems, Girlhood Studies and more.