At Steptoe, I bring to bear more than 25 years of experience in environmental health science, risk assessment, and regulatory toxicology from a variety of roles in state and federal government agencies and organizations, corporations, trade associations, academia, and non-profits. My experience includes work with pesticides, industrial chemicals, food contact materials, dietary supplements, and nanomaterials.I currently specialize in helping clients navigate scientific and regulatory issues related to agricultural and antimicrobial pesticides and endocrine-disrupting chemicals, and I work with them to meet U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Food and Drug Administration (FDA) requirements under:• The Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and Rodenticide Act (FIFRA)• The Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA)• The Food Quality Protection Act (FQPA)• The Toxic Substances Control Act of 1976 (TSCA)• California's Proposition 65I serve clients at the front end of the regulatory process by presenting strategic advice and guidance as they seek to secure market access. At the back end, I provide freedom-to-operate advice they may need to maintain that access.Additionally, as a long-time advocate for reducing the use of animals in assessing chemical safety, I assist clients in pursuing non-animal product testing.Steptoe & Johnson LLP is a Washington, DC-based law firm with more than 100 years of experience and 500 lawyers and professionals in DC and around the world. It is recognized for providing clients with vigorous representation before government agencies, successful advocacy in litigation and arbitration, and creative and practical advice for streamlining business transactions.

As the creator of this business, I applied my chemical regulatory knowledge with an ongoing interest in non-animal testing. My goal was to effect changes in both FIFRA and TSCA that would promote the use of equally effective, but less troubling and burdensome, product testing methods.

I started this non-profit to educate West Virginians about the benefits of medical cannabis. Ultimately, I spent much of my time communicating with state legislators on the topic, with the goal of having them make more scientifically informed decisions about related laws and policies. S.B. 386, which created the Medical Cannabis Act, was signed into law on April 19, 2017.

The first person to serve in this position, I familiarized myself with all the technical and regulatory steps of taking a new product to market and keeping it there. I developed effective strategies for working within a large, international company and across U.S. stakeholders to obtain positive outcomes for the company and its products.

In this role, I consulted with clients on technical and regulatory issues related to chemicals and pesticides covered by FIFRA. It was here that I developed an expertise in agricultural and antimicrobial pesticides and nanomaterials.

This position provided my first introduction to the pesticides industry and allowed me to establish relationships with companies, regulators, academics, and non-profits working on related science and policy issues in the field.

Hired to build technical models to describe the risk of historical contamination at a site in Washington, DC, I ultimately spent a great deal of time involved with risk communication — working with people in the affected community to help them understand the processes behind our efforts and the potential toxicological effects from the site's contaminants.

While training the local public health workforce on chemical emergencies and working with communities throughout the area on emergency preparedness, I honed my ability to help both professionals and ordinary citizens understand risk and how it can be mitigated.

In this position, I learned the fundamental technical skills required to perform human health and ecological risk assessments related to toxicology. I also developed critical communication skills for transmitting the results of those assessments to public audiences.

I performed some technical work in this position, but largely functioned as part of an academic research team that also published a scientific journal. This experience enhanced my ability to critically review scientific findings and make judgments about their potential value to others in the scientific community.