I am an assistant professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Michigan State University. My work is situated in the field of anthropology of education. I draws on critical policy frameworks and employs ethnographic methods to study policy enactment in early childhood settings. In particular, Iexamines early childhood workforce issues and the lived experiences of pre- and in-service pre- kindergarten teachers in the U.S. and Tanzania. The focus of my scholarship is conducting policy-relevant research that contributes to making pre-K a better place for teachers, children, and families. I am the author of "When Pre-K Comes to School: Policy, Partnerships, and the Early Childhood Education Workforce" (2017), which explores how policy is actually enacted in schools and provides important insight into what communities and policymakers should consider when creating pre-K policies. In addition to my domestic work, I study pre-primary teacher education policy in Tanzania and leads projects for MSU’s Tanzania Partnership Program.