I am a developmental psychologist studying how people end up where they are—how they explore different options, choose a path, and sometimes change direction. I am particularly interested in how opportunities and constraints shape these decisions and their long-term outcomes. Drawing on large-scale longitudinal surveys, institutional records, meta-analyses, and field experiments, my work examines psychological processes in real-world settings.

I am currently an Assistant Professor of Psychology at the University of Mississippi. I completed my postdoctoral training in the Department of Psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and earned my Ph.D. from the School of Education at the University of California, Irvine.

My work has been published in journals such as Psychological Bulletin, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Child Development, and Journal of Educational Psychology. I am a recipient of multiple honors, including the APA Dissertation Research Award, the Graduate Student Research Excellence Award from AERA Division C, and the Hershel D. Thornburg Dissertation Award from the Society for Research on Adolescence. My research is funded by the AVDF/ACLS Fellowships for Research on the Liberal Arts.

I am recruiting Ph.D. students through the Experimental Psychology Program at the University of Mississippi.