I graduated from Albany Law School in upstate New York in 2008 with a juris doctorate degree. I earned my B.A. in Political Science from The University of North Carolina at Wilmington in 2005 and, in 2003, earned an A.A. in Political Science from Cape Fear Community College. Prior to becoming an attorney, I worked as a professional musician, an audio engineer, and in the movie industry as a prop-maker.

While in law school, I interned in the chambers of the Honorable John M. Tyson at the North Carolina Court of Appeals, worked at the Government Law Center in Albany, New York (New York's preeminent legal and policy research center and the oldest government law center in the United States according to their Web site) under the direction of Professor Patricia E. Salkin, Associate Dean and full-time Director of the Government Law Center, and also interned at Rice Law, PLLC.

I was born in a small upstate New York town known as Warrensburg (James Fenimore Cooper wrote The Last of the Mohicans there) in 1975 but I consider myself a North Carolinian and love living and working in North Carolina. I am the oldest of four siblings. My parents—who are still together after over 39 years—and my siblings have all lived in Wilmington since my father moved the family here from Rockford, Illinois, in 1985.