After moving back to the US, I began to realize that performing opera wasn't the whole story for me, and that trying to "make it" in opera was having me put my whole life on hold. 

So I got pregnant.

Becoming a mother opened up the way I express myself publicly in a massive way. Soon after my son was born, I started writing poetry. On Instagram.
You can read more about that journey here.

I've become a firm believer in the way that the act of creating shapes us into people with purpose and power. Power to create more. Power because we realize that we matter. And that begins to answer the big questions that arise when, for example, you left a career you'd been pursuing your whole life.

In LA and Oakland, I was struck by the desperation of inequality in my home country. Especially when it came to housing. I began wondering how I can use my skillset from the opera and concert stage to have any impact on this crisis. I found my answer in The Winter's Journey Project. You can learn more about it and how it is still growing here. 

The Winter's Journey Project taught me that I'm more than a singer. I'm a storyteller. And that ability to listen and reflect back what I'm hearing has opened so many doors of connection and purpose.

Because of The Winter's Journey Project, I developed deep and lasting connections with women on the front lines of activism in housing policy. Empowered to tell their stories, I was drawn into Jocelyn's Corner as their communications director. Our group had a huge hand in changing housing policy in California by getting SB 1079 funded by the State Legislature - a law that would make it possible for tenants of foreclosed properties to buy their home out of foreclosure - to the tune of half a billion dollars. You can read more about that adventure here.

Because of my poetry and my work in Jocelyn's Corner, a friend reached out, wondering if I had ever considered copywriting? She has an online spiritual healing brand, and perhaps I would be interested in helping her with her first big launch? 

I had been wondering what was next, so I said, "why not?" With my copy, her next launch was $67k. Six months later, she had her first $100k launch. Doors began opening left and right for me, now that people understood as a person who knows how to really listen for the truth. You can read more about that here.

The work naturally developed into creative direction, and now I work with artists and entrepreneurs to help them not only find their truth, but to create innovative projects and offerings that stem from that truth as The Idea Doula, who you can check out here.

In one of my first acts as the Idea Doula, I created a tool to guide people through the process of fully developing their ideas into workable plans that can gather steam and be realized in the world - I call it Birthing IDEAS: The Idea Journal, and you can get the Ebook here or in print from Amazon here.

In 2021, my family and I moved back to my roots in Atlanta. A week before we moved, a tornado struck my hometown of Newnan, GA, and took out half of the historic town, affecting a cross-section of society. As I surveyed the damage, I got the spark to return in a year or two to gather the stories of the tornado and the recover through the voices of those affected, and weave those voices and those stories into a live performance of Vivaldi's Four Seasons. You can read more about that project, slated to premiere in 2025, around the fourth anniversary of the storm, here.  

The greatest lesson that I've ever learned is that my voice, my creativity, my expression matters, and so does yours. I'm on a mission to make things that matter, and to help others to do the same.

There are many steps that lead an artist to her voice. I will skip a massive amount of them to try and thread together why I think I'm here doing what I'm doing now. In the biography below, you won't see the part about singing in every kid's choir in Atlanta that my ultra-supportive parents could drive me to. You won't see the high school choir director who saw my potential and pushed me to get voice lessons. You won't see the small program at Columbus State University in Columbus, GA (nope, not Ohio) that nurtured me in safe waters before I left the country for a decade.

But I guess you just got that here.

For now, let's start in 2018.

I moved to Oakland, California in 2018 after living in Berlin, Germany, for a decade. In Berlin, I studied German Art Song at the Universität der Künste Berlin, where I worked with some of the most important art song and opera performers of the twentieth century, including Grace Bumbry, Eric Schneider, and Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. From there, I went on to perform in German opera houses for five years, including the Komische Oper Berlin, the Deusche Oper Berlin, and Anhaltisches Theater Dessau.

Off the stage, I was an activist for refugee rights and acceptance into German society, lead by the philosophy that the culture of Berlin belongs to everyone. I arranged, trips to galleries led by the exhibiting artist, an outing to a fireworks competition, as well as sixty tickets to three shows at the Deutsche Oper Berlin for refugees who had never seen an opera.