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I am a Public Historian with 15 years of experience at the Smithsonian Institution and a Ph.D. candidate in the school of Museum Studies at the Â鶹ÊÓƵ. 

My academic research focuses on how visitors emotionally engage with national heritage institutions in the U.S., and how personal beliefs influence what they notice, how they feel, and what they take away from these experiences. I'm particularly interested in how visitors react to uncomfortable or unexpected narratives—how they manage cognitive dissonance or reject conflicting ideas as a form of emotional self-protection. By better understanding how personal and politicized mythologies shape the way people process heritage content, we can develop more effective strategies for engaging the public.

As the Program Manager and Creative Developer for theat the National Museum of American History in Washington D.C., I develop exhibitions, programming, and curricula that highlight the diversity and richness of religious practices in the American experience. I served as Senior Advisor to the Director from 2018 to 2020 where I led the museum-wide effort to develop our ten-year strategic plan.

My academic and professional background is in 20th century U.S. history, with a focus on group identities, the dynamics of othering, and the construction of heritage mythologies. Earlier in my career, I focused work around immigrant communities and mythologies. I wrote my Master’s thesis in 2009 on identity formation of first- and second-generation Colombian immigrants in Greenville, South Carolina. I co-curated, a permanent exhibition that opened in 2016 at the National Museum of American History that explores American culture through the lens of migration and immigrant communities. Over the years, I increasingly applied the same sociological theories of belonging to visitor experience in museums and turned my focus to experiential exhibition development.

In addition to my research and museum projects, I am a part-time lecturer for the Bilingual English History degree at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès where I live with my family in Southwest France. 

, Smithsonian Institution Scholarly Press, Washington DC, 2017.

The Public Historian, Vol. 38 No. 3 (August 2016), pp120-123.

, Talk Story, Smithsonian Center for Folklife and Cultural Heritage, October 7, 2015.

The Public Historian, Vol. 37 No. 2 (May 2015), pp120-123.

, The Public Historian, Vol. 33, No. 4 (November 2011), pp.66-69.

 

Bilingual English History degree at the University of Toulouse Jean Jaurès, Toulouse, France

• Europe in the 19th Century HIAN202
• Empire Building and Imperialism in the Anglophone World HIAN402

Smithsonian’s Emerging Leadership Development Program, 2020-2022.  

2021 Gold award for Resources for General Audiences and Families, , Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums Innovation (GLAMi) awards, MuseWeb.

2021 Of Note award for Resources for General Audiences and Families,, Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums Innovation (GLAMi) awards, MuseWeb.

2018 National Museum of American History Innovation Award winner, Inclusion Infusion, an initiative to improve resources for visitors that are blind and have low vision.

2017 Outstanding Academic Title,, CHOICE.

2017 National Museum of American History Peer Award in Inclusion for spearheading multilingual translations of exhibits. 

EdCom Award 2013 for Excellence in Resources, American Alliance of Museums, for .

Best in Class: Government, Interactive Media Awards, 2013, for .

Best in Class: Education, Interactive Media Awards, 2013, for .

Washington D.C. Museums: Top 10 of 2012, only website listed, Washington Post, , December 2012.

Honorable Mention, New Professional Award, National Council of Public History, 2011.

Darrick Hart Award for Excellence in Public History, University of South Carolina, 2010.

Panel Moderation, “Handling, Collecting, & Displaying Sacred Things and Stories,” Lilly Endowment Convening at the Smithsonian, Washington, D.C., January 2024

Session Presentation, “Providing Access through Visual Descriptions,” at the American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting, Boston, MA, May 2022

Dine and Discuss Session, “Strategic Planning for Resilience,” at the National Council of Public History Virtual Conference, May 2022

Session Presentation, “We are No Longer Waiting: Teaching a More Inclusive American Story,” At the American Association for State and Local History Annual Conference, Philadelphia, PA, August 2019

Roundtable presentation, “Multilingual Texts and Contexts: Educating, Engaging, and Elevating,” at the American Alliance of Museums Annual Meeting, Phoenix, AZ, May 2018

Session Presentation, “Forms of History and Anthropology in the Study of Chicago’s Ethnic Neighborhoods,” at the Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Sacramento, CA, April 2018

Roundtable presentation, “Bilingual Texts and Contexts: Is There a Middle Ground?” at the National Council of Public History Conference, Indianapolis, IN, April 2017

Roundtable presentation, “Silent Witnesses?: The Buildings of Chicago’s Changing Communities,” at the American Anthropological Association’s national conference, Denver, CO, November 2015

Roundtable presentation, “Circling the Edge: Presenting History at Public Institutions,” at the National Council of Public History Conference, Nashville, TN, April 2015

Exhibition group presentation, “Our American Journey,” to the Humanities Action Lab, at the National Council of Public History Conference, Monterey, CA, March 2014

Session presentation, “Las Familias de los Pioneros: Oral histories from one of the Southeast’s longest-standing Latino immigrant communities,” at the National Council of Public History Conference, Pensacola, FL, April 2011