I grew up in a close-knit rural community in southwest Washington. My father managed environmental restoration at a coal mine. My mother worked in frozen food packaging plants before starting her own business and later becoming a human resources leader. My extended family are farmers, ranchers, loggers, and small business owners. They teach me the importance of hard work, integrity, resourcefulness, and looking out for our neighbors. Our church and my Catholic education reinforced a belief that has stayed with me: every person has inherent dignity, no matter their circumstance.
As I grew older, that belief developed into an interest in human rights, social movements, and the ways ordinary people confront injustice. I traveled to Guatemala as a human rights witness. There I met survivors, advocates, and communities rebuilding after decades of violent armed conflict and military and corporate attacks on Indigenous communities to steal land and subvert culture. People died, villages were burned, and the government and corporations bulldozed the remains into mass graves. I went to the village, touched the charred beams, heard mothers weep, and stood with an old man in a field on the spot where his son lay buried in a pit with many others. I never saw the world the same again.
Those experiences deepened my understanding of what happens when people are denied protection by the institutions entrusted to serve them. They also inspired my interest in how survivors, lawyers, and advocates can work together to demand accountability and transform individual cases into broader institutional reform.
That experience clarified what I want from my own life. I want to use my education, experience, and whatever influence I possess to help you reclaim the dignity, safety, and power over your own life that they took from you.
I believe effective advocacy requires more than technical skill or command of the law. It requires curiosity, imagination, emotional courage, and a willingness to enter another person’s experience without judgment.
I am a lawyer because I want to be that person for you.
You are more than your worst experiences. To me, you are not just a case, injury, or legal claim. We are human beings with histories, relationships, hopes, fears, and lives that deserve to be understood in their fullness. I want to know who you were before you were hurt, what you lost, and what you need to move forward.
I cannot undo what happened, but I can work to understand the full measure of what you have endured, help others recognize your experience, and do everything in my power to hold the people or institutions responsible for your injuries accountable.
I cannot promise you that I will succeed, but I can promise you that I will not be intimidated.