Background

I grew up in a large mixed family in a unique space where I was exposed to both affluent suburban neighborhoods and less affluent urban neighborhoods, living just off City Avenue at the dividing line between the suburban Main Line and West Philadelphia. While the circumstances of my birth afforded me the privileges of growing up in a middle/upper-middle class home, it was clear to me even at a young age that there were stark disparities between the suburban neighborhoods many of my classmates lived, and the conditions of not only the general environment itself, but also the built/structural environment of some of the urban neighborhoods in nearby West Philadelphia.

Moving to Baltimore for my undergraduate education continued to expand my views on these stark disparities, with many of the neighborhoods (such as Waverly, Station North) surrounding the Johns Hopkins campus offered another stark contrast in terms of the neighborhood built and natural environment students were exposed to if they declined to follow the freshman guides instructions to stay within the "Hopkins Bubble" (a roughly 8-ish block radius around the main undergraduate campus). Ultimately, I stayed in Baltimore for 8 years in total, hopping around from neighborhood to neighborhood each year to avoid increasing rent I couldn't afford.

I had a crystalizing moment in my personal and professional development while volunteering in a homeless shelter clinic medical, offering basic care to unhoused folks who came to the church for shelter and/or medical care. When I wasn't in the lab doing bench work, I would volunteer at a homeless shelter helping the medical director there provide basic care to those who came to the clinic, and what became apparent quickly was that I was seeing the same people coming in time and again to the shelter, for the same things (a common combination was that of hypertension and type 2 diabetes), often with little improvement in conditions. If I as a type 1 diabetic from an objectively privileged background struggled (and I still do) to manage my health, it was no wonder to me that these patients--overwhelmingly comprised of unhoused men of color--were struggling to manage these objectively complex co-occurring medical conditions on top of the struggles they have to just barely make ends meet, if you can call it that.

Volunteering in that position was a major impetus for my switch from bench science research and medicine ultimately to public health, along with the sum of my life experience living largely in urban spaces forced to navigate the complexities of the medical system at an early age, which lead me to pursue first my MPH at Thomas Jefferson University. I received my PhD from Drexel University's Epidemiology PhD program in August 2024. I am currently working as a post-doc at the Sidney Kimmel Cancer Center in Philadelphia, in their Experimental Therapeutics and Pharmacology section under Dr. Terry Hyslop, in the Center for Cancer Health Equity, where my current research focuses on how different soci0economic and environmental exposure clusters differentially impact breast and other cancer outcomes. 

So, who am I? 

First, the fun: I'm a (lapsed) rock climber when I'm not injured or dissertating, loving partner to a much smarter and more hardworking nurse practitioner, and a loving cat dad to Phoebe and Daphne, and general all-around enjoyer of video and board games.

Now, the important: I reject the idea of an "objective" science, and reject the idea that science is at its best apolitical pursuit.  I am a harm reductionist, an unapologetic proponent of universal comprehensive healthcare, universal basic housing, and universal basic income to promote a healthful way of living for all. I am motivated to make serious change in the landscape of public health and housing, especially with regard to the structural and systemic processes and institutions which shape exposures (and importantly, who is actually exposed to them). I was lucky to be born in relative privilege, and I want to use it how I can in pursuit of this agenda: build a better, more equitable, and fair world for all.