I graduated from 8th grade at Ashwood in 2002 and was well prepared for high school at CHRHS. I started college at Bennington College, then transferred to the University of Vermont and studied anthropology, with a semester in Bali in between.
During college I started working with resettled refugees, sparking a passion that I’ve been pursuing in a variety of ways ever since. After college I spent time designing programs for unaccompanied children coming into the U.S. and worked in Thailand with refugees from Burma before deciding to get my master’s in social work at Tulane in New Orleans. After graduating, I worked designing and implementing a refugee wellness program in Ohio providing support for newly arriving refugees from a range of countries. This experience spurred me to study Arabic, something I had been wanting to do for years but hadn’t had the chance to. I moved to Jordan, where I studied Arabic, worked providing educational programming in Palestinian communities, and got married!
After three years in Jordan, I decided to move back to the U.S. to pursue my doctorate in psychology in Boston, with the hope of gaining more concrete skills to work with a range of different populations, and am now in my second year of the program. I’m so grateful for my Ashwood experience and reflect on it often, especially with all the current changes in education due to the pandemic. Ashwood provided me with the skills and perspective for a lifetime of learning, exploring, and growth and I am so appreciative!