About me
Based in the Pacific Northwest, USA, I’m a neurodivergent communication scholar and neurocultural guide.
I combine my academic background, professional expertise, and lived experiences as a gifted and autistic person to:
- Design ways to integrate our neurodivergence as a culture
- Reimagine how we communicate across neuro-differences
- Communicate the way I see and understand culture and communication through art (including AI imagery) and collage
On a personal note, I’m a third culture kid (and native Spanish speaker), a mother, a playful creative, and lover of books, beauty, and imagination.
"Words are events, they do things, change things. They transform both speaker and hearer; they feed energy back and forth and amplify it. They feed understanding or emotion back and forth and amplify it." - Ursula K. Le Guin
Academic Background
My studies have focused on personal and interpersonal dimensions of communication, all based in fields with a non-pathologizing approach to differences:
- Master of Arts in Spanish Linguistics, with a special focus on politeness theory
- Certificate in translation studies in Spanish-English translation
- Several certificates in medical, legal, & community interpretation, as well as a trained trainer in community interpretation
- Certificate in intercultural communication studies from the Intercultural Development Research Institute
Professional expertise
My work experience has focused on interpersonal and systemic dimensions of communication, with a focus on systems design and education:
- Designed systems & training inside organizations (public education and refugee resettlement) and the larger community to help ensure language access
- Facilitated communication across language (& cultural) differences for 10+ years as an interpreter and translator
- Trained & supported interpreters (communication facilitators) representing more than 40 different languages
Key experiences
100+
I've facilitated hundreds of conversations across language (and cultural) differences, and trained interpreters of 20+ languages to do the same.
6+
Degrees and certificates in linguistics, intercultural communication, interpretation, and translation, including an M.A. with an emphasis in sociolinguistics.
40+
Years of lived experience (and life-experiments) as a multiply-neurodivergent woman, mother (in a neurodivergent family), and grownup third culture kid.
Currently learning about
My current areas of study as I continue to explore autism, communication, and future-focused change:
- Imagination work (including Rob Hopkins’ book How to Fall in Love with the Future)
- Afrofuturist & solarpunk literature, media, and art
- Epistemology and epistemic (in)justice
- Thrutopias and methods by which we can imagine "clear, engaging routes through to a world we’d all be proud to bequeath to future generations" (source)