I am a communications, marketing, and writing freelancer from the United States with an international portfolio, including work in Asia and Africa.

My Substack newsletter Cross/Culture explores the benefits of life across borders and other boundaries through my expat experience and Amish-Mennonite background.

I created and maintain Dili Guide as a website for expats in Timor-Leste. This free community resource was the first to put a list of Dili’s restaurants and snorkeling sites online.

As an adult, I’ve lived in six countries on three continents. But my childhood home of Kenilworth in Washington DC is central to my writing, creativity, and understanding of cross-cultural life.

As part of a lifetime effort to tell the story of this marginalized neighborhood of color, in the mid-2000s I published a history of the Kenilworth area, which includes the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens. Download a free pdf of this grant-supported booklet:
Kenilworth: A DC Neighborhood by the Anacostia River

My white, rural, Amish-Mennonite parents started a church in the Black, urban, largely low-income community of Kenilworth in the mid-sixties. Sound like a book? I’m writing a memoir about my family’s experience.

You can also read a cover story about Kimi Gray, a local hero whose revitalization of Kenilworth’s public housing complex led to national public housing leadership.