I’m an award-winning writer, book collaborator, deadline-beater, researcher, and former news reporter and food critic.

I am passionate about empowering people from diverse backgrounds to tell their own stories: I have worked with immigrants, entrepreneurs, medical doctors, mental health professionals, career and life coaches, bakers, and restaurant owners. I even had the honor of telling the story of a Vietnamese refugee who escaped the fall of Saigon by leaping onto a fishing boat, and went on to become a noted American chef. The resulting book, Mango and Peppercorns, won the 2022 IACP award for Literary or Historical Food Writing.