I am a catalyzer. For the past 15 years, I have been using this skill at Stanford, both in my classroom and at the Hume Center for Writing and Speaking. My primary focus is writing, research, rhetoric and oral presentation, which means I have a keen understanding of how writing and speaking work in a variety of genres and have a facility for collaborating with writers and speakers to help them turn their smart thinking into clear and compelling prose and presentations. I bring these talents to students in my courses, those I work with at the writing center, and to my clients beyond Stanford. In the writing center, I work with undergraduates, graduate students, and instructors on all forms of writing, from essays to applications and from dissertations to articles to course descriptions. As a writing consultant/editor, I work with graduate students and professors on journal articles and specialize in working with multilingual writers.Prior to teaching at Stanford, I was a copy editor and proofreader at Forbes ASAP magazine, an editor at CNET, the newsletter manager at Garage.com and the Associate Director at The Beat Within (a non-profit writing program and publication in juvenile halls in the Bay Area and beyond).I am also deeply committed to social justice. I teach courses on engaged scholarship, criminal justice, and the possibilities and limitations of connecting empathy and social justice.Finally, my dissertation research expertise is 18th century execution sermons and crime narratives featuring black lawbreakers, which speaks to issues of race, law, crime, black subjectivity and early African American literature.