Major(s): Classics
What is your current role? What was your journey in arriving there?
I earned a PhD in Classical Studies in 2014 from Penn and taught in academia for 6 years. I was a non-tenure track faculty member in the University of New Hampshire’s Responsible Governance and Sustainable Citizenship Program for four years and took a postdoc in classical rhetoric and Anchoring Innovation at Radboud University in the Netherlands. In 2020, I decided not to go on the academic job market again and began working as an instructional designer, eventually becoming the curriculum director at a small nonprofit focused on community education about local government and policy advocacy. When I left the nonprofit, colleagues in my network began reaching out to me about part-time project-based work opportunities related to curriculum design, research, and writing. In addition, I’d begun writing public scholarship in 2015, which has turned into writing about pedagogy and civic education on a fairly popular Substack newsletter about democracy renovation.
What do you enjoy about your work? What challenges does your industry currently face?
I love the work. As a friend of a friend in Mexico City once said to me when I told him that I made video games: “You must have a very happy life.” The difficult is everything around the work — currently, games are undergoing a contraction from their pandemic high. However, we’re still a massive industry, so I hope this slows down. For now, my current game has been extremely successful and I hope to continue designing and creating games!
How did your time at Wesleyan influence your career choice/journey?
If I had gotten a tenure track job — which I certainly could have, based on my publications and teaching — I would almost certainly still be a professor, almost certainly far away from my family. But because of reduced funding for tenure lines in humanities education in higher ed, there are so few jobs that it’s just a matter of luck. At the same time, when I began working as an instructional designer, my pay was actually better than it had been as a professor, even though my PhD was ostensibly a qualification for the latter and not the former. Because educators are stretched so thin, the industry of people supporting teaching has grown exponentially and is better resourced, which is totally unreasonable. I also find myself doing a fair amount of writing professionally, which I never thought would be financially sustainable but always wanted to do. I love working in a field of intellectual people committed to making a positive social impact.
Do you have any advice for students thinking about entering your industry?
Wesleyan was my first introduction to Classics, so my career path would have been totally different elsewhere – I didn’t go into my first year planning to major in Classics at all, but ended up taking two courses that I loved, including my first year seminar. The department was fantastic – a small but committed group of nerds! The Wesleyan community’s prioritizing of intellectual curiosity and exploration over corporate success or high salaries turned out to be a great fit for me.
Updated June 8, 2026
