The Driskell Center is a creative incubator at the University of Maryland dedicated to a world with Black art at its center. As Director I manage and oversee long-term planning and policies for The Driskell Center, including financial and strategic plans for all areas of responsibility and the administrations of those plans. This includes the timely planning, development, and execution of the Center’s curatorial, exhibition, and educational program offerings and schedules. I also manage the care and preservation of the Center’s existing collection, the acquisition of new artwork/ archival collections/ publications, and the deaccessioning of work(s) no longer deemed necessary for the collection. Perhaps most importantly, I represent The Driskell Center as a thought leader and advocate for the arts on a local, national, and international level.

I am an Associate Professor of Modern and Contemporary American Art at the University of Maryland, College Park. My research centers on modern and contemporary American visual culture with an emphasis on expressions and theorizations of blackness. My first book Reading Basquiat: Exploring Ambivalence in American Art (University of California Press, 2014), which reexamines the painting practice of the often-mythologized 1980s art star Jean-Michel Basquiat, received the PEN Center USA Award for Exceptional First Book in 2015. My second book The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader:Writings, Interviews, and Critical Responses will be published by the University of California Press as part of the "Documents of Contemporary Art" series in April 2021. Through a combination of interviews with the artist, hard-to-find articles, and previously unpublished research by the author, The Jean-Michel Basquiat Reader provides a full picture of Jean-Michel Basquiat’s views on art and culture, his working process, as well as the critical significance of his work both then and now.

I know what it feels like to be overwhelmed and lost in an academic career. As a first-generation student I struggled through graduate school and my first years on the tenure track, constantly questioning my ability, doubting my research, and comparing myself to everyone else. ​​Bringing to bear my more than two decades of experience in the professoriate AND my training as a life coach, I now help others reach their highest professional potential without sacrificing their own well-being and values in the process.​