About

Educator, Park Ranger, thesaurus author, and national security expert. From 2006-2018 I worked as a small business owner, stage manager, line producer, creative consultant, and author. From 2015-2019 I produced and hosted the /r/changemyview podcast, the official podcast of the now 3-million-member reddit.com/r/changemyview community. After dropping out of Cal in 2003, I returned to complete my undergrad education in 2018 and graduated with a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley in 2019. I followed this with a Master’s in Public Policy (National Security focus) from UC San Diego’s School of Global Policy and Strategy, where my personal specialization was on what I believe is our most important national security issue: Truth Decay. I studied the causes and implications of modern political polarization and the decay in public institutional trust, and what policymakers and voters can do about it. Upon graduation, I took a job as an Interpretive Park Ranger with the National Park Service at Grand Teton National Park in June-October 2022, which was a personally transformational experience that led me to pursue a future in education. I am now making young brains more powerful as a 2nd-grade math teacher at Achieve Academy, a public charter school in Oakland, CA.