Being the first grandchild born to both sides of my family, I began performing at a very young age. There's a story that's been told many times in my family about my first Christmas celebration when I was almost a year old. My relatives were all in one room with the tree and presents and hundreds of cameras while my mom waited with me in the other room. When she heard the signal, she brought me in and I began to smile and look around at all the activity as if to say, WOW, but not everyone was ready for me, they said, "take her back, take her back." When they were ready again for me my mother brought me back out and I reacted the same way, "oh, ooh, ahh"; a little performer in the making.

I began to dance at 4-years-old because my parents couldn't get me to keep still, that's when I caught the bug. My first theatre show was in kindergarden when I played a beautiful red cardinal. My early life was full of Saturday dance classes at the Towson University Children's Dance Division, where I studied Jazz, Tap, Modern, and as little Ballet as possible. In high school I joined the Pom Squad, the school dance team, which performed as the band front in the fall and at the basketball games in the winter. As a "Pom" I learned more about marching band, kick lines, hip-hop and crowd-related dancing. After performing so intensely with the Poms for half the year, I auditioned for the spring musical, Calamity Jane, and I've been in love with theatre ever since.

I attended Concord University in southern West Virginia for many reasons. It had good business, education and theatre programs, I was interested in all three at the time, and I thought I'd be more comfortable in a small pond. Boy, was I right. I had a great experience there including many new, difficult, challenging growth opportunities that have helped me become who I am today.

While attending CU I was invited to join the National Honorary Theatre Fraternity, Alpha Psi Omega, spending two years as the Fundraising Coordinator and one year as Director (or President) of the chapter. We participated in many fundraisers including ice cream socials for aids victims, plays for domestic violence and sexual assault awareness, as well as programs designed to promote appreciation for the visual and fine arts divisions at the university. The Mountain Lion festival is an Open House that occurs every year and is an opportunity for incoming freshman to come and explore the campus and get to know some of the groups of students. Along with my good friend, Andy, I organized and ran three consecutive Alpha Psi tables at the festival-- each year we won a prize for having the best table at the event. (Our tables would have past costumes and photos from recent shows, sometimes on a laptop slide show, and many actors there to give the room a quick monologue or scene performance.) I also served as House Manager for Alpha Psi sponsored shows such as Romeo and Juliet and Picasso at the Lapin Agile as well as countless One-Act Festivals.

But, I didn't only perform at school, I was involved in two performances at Summit Theatre in Bluefield, WV, a local dinner theatre, where I made a lot of great friends and performed one of my favorite roles Christy in Pruning the Family Tree by Daniel Gordon. It's a play about a four women family: Grandma, Aunt, Mother and Daughter (me). The Grandfather has just died, which brings the estranged family together for the first time in years. The Grandmother's crazy, the Aunt is slow, the Mother is a man-izer and the Daughter wants to feel included by these people who have never really loved her. She starts out by playing the 'better than thou' part and finally breaks down to ask her mother, "why don't you like me? I don't even think you love me, I've heard it before but I've never seen it, and what's worse, I don't ever remember feeling it." I made my real mother cry.

I also had the fantastic opportunity to perform a summer stock performance in the Palo Duro Canyon, TX called Texas Legacies. I learned so much about myself and had a great time doing it. "Texas" called me as an Ensemble performer, which was wonderful in itself, but once I got there I was given western style horseback riding lessons, some lines, later a soloist understudy, and finally I was giving the soloist role of "wife of the dead soldier". It taught me that being myself can lead to great things which will add great joy to my life.

After graduation I moved back to my hometown of Baltimore Maryland and had the great pleasure to work with the amazing Run of the Mill Theater's second annual Variations Project, Variations on Fear. My experiences with this show sent me on an upward spiral to where I am today.

While performing VoF I met another actor, Jesse Baxter, who was just starting to have a crazy idea about actors going to Africa... that's when my life officially became one planet-sized Dramatic Adventure. (To hear more about that story, click on DAT.)