I earned a BA in Ethics from Georgetown University and an MA in Ethics from Yale Divinity School. In 2025, I participated in Leadership Upper Valley and launched this enterprise.
Below are some (not all!) of the areas where I offer a radically different view.
Ethics v Rules
I have always loved rules! I have also always been deeply committed to living my reasoned ethics with integrity.
Much to my surprise, these two do not always get along.
I give primacy to what emerges from reasoned, intuitive reflection, and then I examine the issue through a rigorous ethical framework. So, I should be able to follow all the rules, right?
Wrong.
I have repeatedly found that living with integrity requires pushing back on rules. I have been shocked to watch others react to rigorously studied, values-driven decisions as if they were unconsidered simply because they didn't reflect expected compliance.
What I have come to realize (and it has been a long road!) is that our society runs on tacit agreements that we will all play by the same default rules. But if you trust your own perceptions and your way of thinking, you may find that some rules shouldn't be followed.
I love ethics and I love integrity. If you want to see those two end up together, you're in the right place.
Non Linear Thinking
I always knew my brain worked differently than others. About 99% of the time, I could still get to the same goal. Often I was wearing a medal and holding a paper that said “A” and secretly wondering why I felt like I didn’t do it right. Because I got there in my own way. Don’t even ask me to show you how. Living in that situation for years and years creates a persistent sense of being "wrong.” Being misunderstood or talked down to can make even a gold medalist wonder whether they are processing correctly.
Good news though!
I’ve been researching. I’m pleased to report that my brain and perceptions have always been just fine. The systems I lived inside insisted that their way was a standard that I should try to reach. In some ways, it seemed as if a linear top-down process was assumed to be morally superior. Honestly, I don’t think it’s wise to call that out with an ethicist.
Just because someone can sit in one spot for a long time, perform monotonous tasks without complaint, and show you exactly how they did it does not make them inherently better equipped for a meaningful life. When I see brilliant, diverse minds being evaluated through that narrow lens, my professional opinion as an ethicist is simple:
The whole premise is baloney.
I have the ethical chops, updated research, and decades of experience to back this up. I'm here to help retire that nitrite-rich framework for good.
Reality v Greeting Card
Our culture stubbornly insists on repeating narratives about family that fail to acknowledge the complexity of real human experience.
I have navigated a complex family landscape throughout my life, and I know I'm not alone. Cultural expectations that hype conformity or denial over reality do nothing to help. This is true for exhausted parents wondering why they aren't "enjoying every moment" of the early years, or adults navigating dynamics with young-adult children who are supposed to be fully independent simply because a calendar hit a certain number.
When we open up to the truth of our actual experiences, we can hold the complexity that love, exhaustion, and disappointment often cohabitate and don't erase each other.
Almost no one has a family that fits on a greeting card. It is time we start honoring actual experience and release the guilt around the fact that the truth doesn't fit on the card, even when we turn it over and write on the back.
Rest & Natural Pacing
I believe peer environments can be deeply important for growth. But requiring humans to engage for hours on end without pause is simply not how we are wired.
Many people struggle within educational and work schedules built for an idealized template they do not share. Rethinking these structures is so complex that doing so feels like it would take a logistical miracle.
It is okay to acknowledge the complexity of arranging family, school, and work. That is honest. It is also honest to acknowledge that the current pace of life is too fast for many of us to keep up. That includes kids, and it definitely includes anyone who honors their natural human capacity and limits.
Until we shift these structural defaults, we will keep trying to apply patches to something that would be far better served by a system update. I would love to have some honest conversations about this that don't moralize the current speed as inherently necessary. Just being honest about the fact that we need to make a change would be great, right? I know we don't know how to adjust the dial down just yet. But I bet we could figure it out.
Tradition v Lived Truth
A flower blooms and then eventually dies. Relationships can mimic this, and they often do. Ending does not mean bad or a mistake; it just means people grow and shift like everything in the natural world.
No-fault divorce was legalized in the 1960s. Why does our culture keep insisting there is a need to assign blame? We cite outdated assumptions to deter people from honoring what they actually experience. Is this really what we want to teach our children?
Is it possible to love someone and change in ways that require you to amend the original plan? Does needing change mean you are irresponsible or dishonest? Can amazing humans emerge from a relationship that doesn't span from age 25 to 75?
Hell, yes.
We often frame divorce in a false binary that makes it seem like a Capulet vs. Montague situation by necessity. It does not have to be this way. We keep creating the same painful experiences because we keep falling back on the same outdated ways of thinking.
Humans used to get a toothache and die at 37. "Till death do us part" for the toothache guy meant something pretty different than it does today. It behooves all of us to own the truth that we may live to a hundred. That is a long time! We need to settle in for the whole journey, and that might require making adjustments along the way.
A marital relationship can shift in a way that preserves family. Family can take so many different forms, and the specific shape is secondary to the love underneath. You can be deeply connected to someone AND live in different houses.
Divorce can happen in a way that centers kids and honors the connection between co-parents, even when the process is messy. The framework organizing our lives can expand to hold a different way of being if we let it.
