From the age of seven when I used the lavender walls of my bedroom as a chalkboard, I wanted to be a teacher. My first-grade teacher must’ve seen it as well. She let me sit in her teacher’s chair at the front of the class and teach my classmates using the vocabulary cards I had made from cut-up cardboard cereal boxes. What a rush! I was hooked but took a slight detour as an undergrad thinking I wanted to be a journalist. Internships in radio and television, however, showed me I didn’t have the stomach for it. I have an inquisitive mind that is more interested in how and why we communicate and with whom in a multitude of settings than in reporting someone’s tragedy.

After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in communication from Concordia Lutheran College, Austin, Texas, in 1987, I enrolled in the University of Iowa’s College of Education. My original intention was to work with the deaf and put my rudimentary training in American Sign Language to work, however, no one, including myself, was able to map out a curriculum for that. Instead, in 1991 I got my teaching licenses in speech communication/theatre/English/language arts for grades 7-12.

While in graduate school at Iowa, I worked and taught at Scattergood Friends School in West Branch for three years. From there I taught English and speech at Urbandale High School for seven years where I also was a speech and drama coach. I obtained a master’s degree in communication studies from The University of Northern Iowa in 1999 and moved on to teach oral communication, interpersonal communication, and theatre courses at Iowa Lakes Community College for 23 years, retiring in 2022 after 33 years in education, teaching in a variety of formats: online, virtual, and fast-track. During this last teaching adventure, I began presenting at state, regional, and national conferences, speaking on the topics of communication, education, and technology. I also served on the executive board and as the Executive Secretary for the Iowa Communication Association for several years.

About the same time I was teaching imaginary students in my bedroom, I discovered a love for writing. Overhearing a domestic disagreement at the age of seven or eight, I wrote a story about it and discovered I loved writing about my observations. I also started my first novel, A Time for Us, using the JC Penny’s catalog for my illustrations, but, alas, it’s still unfinished. I published my first children’s book in 2018 and a poetry/prose collection in 2022. My intergenerational memoir about legacy trauma was published in 2025.