In the past, my research has mainly evolved around Environmental Justice and social vulnerabilities to hazards. From the EJ, perspective, I have conducted research in the US as well as in Australia using mixed methods. I have also participated in research projects examining the relationship between Hispanic immigration and crime at the neighborhood level. Currently, I am interested in migration to the US from Mexico, Mexican family life, and I am working on a project that will measure health outcomes for individuals in Mexico based on skin color stratification.    

I grew up in Dunwoody, Georgia, just outside Atlanta. I completed my undergraduate degree in meteorology at Penn State in 2005 and entered the US Air Force. After serving as a pilot in the Air Force for several years, I went back to school for a master's degree and then taught geography courses at the US Air Force Academy. My master's degree focused on fertility decline in the US during the Great Recession. My interest in fertility rates began around the birth of my first child and on the heels of some struggles with infertility. I also read a key book that got me more interested in this topic, What to Expect When No One's Expecting by Jonathan V. Last. The declining fertility we see in the developed world, and specifically here in the US, really fascinates me.

I am an Associate Professor of Sociology at UCSB, in Santa Barbara, CA. Formerly, I was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana with a joint appointment in the Department of Gender Studies. I earned a BA in Economics at Smith College, a PhD in Sociology at Cornell University, and was a Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar at Columbia University. My main research and teaching areas are gender, work, health, reproduction, social psychology, and social inequality.