Background
I grew up in the same Minnesota town as Kevin Sorbo. In fact, I received my first set of stitches after a teeter totter incident in what is now Kevin Sorbo Park. Brushes with B-list celebrity and the occasional need for stitches! What else could one ask for in her early years?
Fast forward to 1998, when I enthusiastically left home to pursue my undergraduate work at Tufts University in Boston, Massachusetts. During my first year at Tufts, I met Daniel Dennett, a modern philosopher of cognitive science, who first exposed me to the idea that there was a cellular basis for complex traits like self-consciousness, free will, and goal-oriented thinking and that these traits were shaped slowly, bit by bit, by the powerful force of evolutionary selection. I was captivated! At 18, I thought I had stumbled upon a new wave of thinking about human behavior that would take the world by storm. I hadn’t, of course. The philosophy of mind can be traced back to Plato and cognitive science and evolutionary psychology had been going strong in academia and for thirty years or more. At Tufts, I also had the opportunity to work in the laboratory of Robin Kanarek, a behavioral neuroscientist, on projects examining the effects of pharmacological interventions on human cognition. Thanks to the mentorship of Drs. Dennett, Kanarek, and others, I left Tufts, not just with a degree in philosophy and psychology, but also with a passion for studying the biological roots of human behavior.
After college, I took a research assistant position in the laboratory of Dr. Philip S. Holzman of Harvard University, studying co-familial traits of schizophrenia. Philip Holzman (now deceased) was, in short, an amazing man and an unforgettable mentor. Among the many, many things he taught me about psychology, mental illness, and genetics, what stands out for me most, what I’m reminded of every time I approach a research question, is the standard of research practice that he evoked in everyone who worked for him. A pioneer in the field of psychiatric genetics, Holzman has a 30+ year publishing record, every finding of which has been replicated at least once by other researchers. During this period, I also got my first exposure to severe mental illness through working with acutely and chronically psychotic patients and their families as research participants. After two years of working in this environment, my path had become quite clear; I wanted to work to further the understanding of the complex etiology of psychological disorders.
In 2004, I started my graduate training in Clinical Psychology and Behavioral Genetics at the University of Colorado at Boulder. I pursued research projects using behavioral, neuroimaging, genetic, and clinical methods to determine the causes and consequences of mental illness across the lifespan. In terms of clinical practice, I gained experience with populations across the lifespan in a variety of clinical settings.
I am currently doing my predoctoral internship at Duke University Medical Center, where I am gaining specialized training in child and family therapy. Since arriving at Duke, I have continued to pursue and expand upon my research interests under the mentorship of Dr. Scott Kollins examining the comorbidities between developmental psychiatric illness and substance use.