I am a joint education and political science PhD candidate at the University of Pennsylvania in the Education, Culture, and Society division of the Graduate School of Education and the political theory department in the School of Arts and Sciences.

My scholarship considers the role of wealthy private actors — like philanthropists and philanthropic corporations — in shaping the priorities and purposes of public education. I work to reveal the stakes of this increasing entanglement between private actors and public education as an urgent political issue, where the loud voices of powerful and wealthy actors dominate our political discourse through philanthropic action and policy advocacy, shaping educational priorities to serve their own purposes and interests.

Using approaches from political theory, American Political Development, American Political Economy, and critical discourse analysis, my work explores the impact and stakes of private actors in public institutions. My focus is on the privatization of public education in particular, where a coalition of state and private actors collaborate to implement a schooling for work agenda, one that downstreams the training of future employees to K-12 schools.