From the classroom to the courtroom, my passion has been public service. I’m running for the 10th District Court of Appeals because I believe in equal justice for everyone.
I’m a career appellate public defender at the Office of the Ohio Public Defender, where I fight for the rights of people who cannot afford a lawyer. I supervise a team of appellate attorneys and carry my own caseload. I have litigated dozens of cases in our State’s appellate courts and the Ohio Supreme Court.
I’ve spent my whole life fighting for justice and fairness for everyone. As judge, I’ll make sure that every single person who walks into the courtroom is treated with dignity and respect, as an equal.
I began my career as a sixth grade English and history teacher in Los Angeles, where I encountered a broken education system that denied children equal educational opportunities.
I knew I had to do something to help.
I decided to go to law school so I would have the power to create change for my students and for children like them.
Since then, I have been doing just that.
As a law student, I worked down in Mississippi fighting to reopen a historically black elementary school and represented individuals struggling to access welfare benefits and food stamps.
After law school, I clerked for U.S. Court of Appeals Judge Eric L. Clay. I worked as an attorney at the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, where I fought for students’ rights to learn free from race, gender, disability, and other types of discrimination in Ohio. I then became the Legal Services Manager at Equitas Health, where I ran a statewide name and gender change clinic for transgender and gender-nonconforming people and their families, and provided legal representation to members of the LGBTQ+ community across Ohio.
I have volunteered my time as Chair of the Columbus Bar Association’s LGBT Bar Committee, as Co-President of the American Constitution Society’s Columbus lawyer chapter, and by providing pro bono legal assistance to communities that need free legal help.
And now, every day as a supervising appellate attorney with the Office of the Ohio Public Defender, I represent some of the people most marginalized by our systems, assuring their rights are upheld and their voices are heard.
I have dedicated my career to civil rights and public defense.
As a judge for the 10th District Court of Appeals, I will continue that lifelong passion for service and be a steady and reasonable voice for all whose cases come before me.
I received my BA from Brown University, my MA from Loyola Marymount University, and my JD from the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
After living in Michigan and on both coasts, I made my home in Central Ohio. I live in Worthington with my husband, Ben, our two daughters, Charlotte and Isabelle, and our dog, Sadie.