With my creative heart and researcher’s brain, I use a thought-partner approach to help high-level thinkers turn complex, original ideas into impactful narratives.

As a curious kid, I was always running on parallel tracks. On the one hand, as a budding poet, playwright and novelist, I penned odes to owls, anti-conformist performance pieces and a family memoir inspired by a squirrel. On the other hand, I was enraptured by research, all the way from the fifth grade report on Vermont researched from a mildewed Encyclopedia Britannica in the local library, all the way to a PhD dissertation in Italian Studies, and a monograph on gendered representations of World War II Italy. 

In my first years in academia, I managed to elbow myself enough room to keep the creativity flowing. When all those words on the page felt like too much black and white, I learned to carve them out of linoleum and bring them to colored, textured life in the printmaking studio.

But as I started my first university job as a professor the same year I became a mother, my work-life balance fell off a cliff. I was a lactating brain in a jar, running on fumes, until my body sent enough smoke signals to set me on fire. 

After a few false starts, I held my breath and stepped my toe in the murky gym waters. When I discovered powerlifting, a new dimension came online: I could be an intellectual, a writer, an artist, a mother and an athlete — imagine that! — capable of learning new things with my heart and soul, arms and legs. 

Not a moment too soon: it was time to step out of the Ivory Tower and see what new tricks an old dog could learn.

My years as a professor, researcher, teacher and mentor gave me the skills to work in a co-creative relationship with top-level thinkers. It also helped me identify collaboration as the value on which I wanted to hang my hat.

But as I took my first steps, I hadn’t the foggiest idea what shape such a career could take. 

I tried my hand at the existing job titles that would leverage my love of language: copy editor, content writer, ghostwriter, writing coach. But once I was on the job, I would find my best relationships were those that transformed organically as we followed the creative process with one goal in mind: to let our dialogue lead the text towards the strongest possible version.

How to describe such a relationship?

The metaphors I needed to think through my professional identity came to me through organic gardening – a passion I discovered in my first year as a freelancer: I help my clients prep the soil and sow the seeds of their ideas (thinning out all but the strongest), transplant the healthiest starts into the right environment, weed out the volunteers, prune back the excess growth, harvest at the peak of maturity, and save seeds for next year’s planting. These metaphors expanded my view of this vocation I was creating, helping me to realize that my unique gift is my ability to interact organically with people to help bring their ideas into written form. 

When I find the right metaphor - for myself or for a client - it feels like slipping on a brand new pair of glasses, as blurry edges come into sweet relief. Every part of writing gives me joy, from the click of an individual word choice to the excavation of a paragraph to the architecture of an entire book, and I use this passion to help others who have something to say.