I’m originally from a small family farm about 70 or so miles east of San Francisco in the San Joaquin Valley of California, just outside the town of Escalon. I started my undergrad at the California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly SLO) in 2011, and graduated cum laude with a double-major in history and philosophy in 2015. In Fall 2015, I began my M.A. in philosophy at San Francisco State University. During my time in San Francisco I was a lead graduate teaching associate, running pedagogy workshops and mentoring other graduate instructors. My M.A. thesis, completed in 2017, focused on how some ‘cognitive’ values serve as desiderata in scientific practices like robustness analysis that compare multiple kinds of models. In Fall 2018 I moved to Toronto to begin my Ph.D. at the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology. No, I was not prepared for my first non-California winter, and yes, everyone had a good laugh about it. I completed my Ph.D. in late 2022, and from 2022-2023 I was a visiting lecturer at the Department of History and Philosophy of Science and the University of Pittsburgh, teaching core courses for the university’s certificate in Conceptual Foundations of Medicine. As of Fall 2024, I reside in Johnson City, Tennessee and am a Lecturer in the Department of Philosophy and Humanities at East Tennessee State University.

Other than my research, teaching philosophy is my passion. I’ve taught philosophy courses in some form over the past eight years to a wide range of students in cosmopolitan contexts, from the community college level to the four-year university level, including San Francisco State, Diablo Valley College, the University of Toronto, the University of Pittsburgh, and now East Tennessee State University. I sincerely believe that teaching and instilling a passion for critical reasoning and self-reflection is one of the most important functions of contemporary philosophy.

Being from a small farm, I’m deeply passionate about nature and the environment, and I recognize the importance of community. In my free time I enjoy the outdoors, cooking, road trips, D&D, talking about viticulture, playing the guitar and the banjo, and listening to Marty Robbins (though recently, quite a bit of Chappell Roan).

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