About

After college, I began work as an elf in the Harrods Christmas Grotto (yes it’s called that), which I thought would make the perfect offbeat memoir until a merchant marine Father Christmas gifted me a copy of David Sedaris’s “Holidays on Ice”: scooped. Elfing was my favorite job ever until I became a professor. 

Now, I direct the writing program at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, where I teach and create new programs for STEM students who will craft our futures. Lately, I have woven the climate storytelling I do as a writer into my teaching, asking young engineers to solve the riddle of why the most important story in the world is often the least and worst told. I see helping people tell the most difficult, important stories – the ones gnarled with STEM terminology, riddled with statistics, told by people unsure of their English or their degree or their courage to keep staring down the blank page of their dissertation, essay, paper, book – as my mission.