I grew up in Kansas City, MO and received my BA from the University of Missouri.  As an undergraduate student I swapped back and forth between several majors (English, History, Africana Studies, Film Studies, Art, and Journalism) before settling on a double major in Philosophy and Creative Writing.  Though Creative Writing was the subject I favored the most, I realized that I didn’t have the clearest path to a professional career in it. And so, through the help of one of my undergraduate mentors, I came to realize that pursuing my PhD in Philosophy at Cornell would allow me both the opportunity to explore a career in teaching and the opportunity to continue to creatively write.  My main area of research is Applied Ethics. I focus on cases revolving around harm: how we define it, what counts as harm to others, what counts as harm to ourselves and trickier cases such as whether it’s possible to harm those who are unaware of said harm. By providing answers to these questions I hope to change the way in which people tend to think about other philosophical issues in areas such as Medical Ethics and Philosophy of Law. Outside of writing and teaching, I enjoy playing chess, cooking, playing video games, watching bad movies, taking classes outside of philosophy and all things basketball and football (both playing and watching).