{"id":890,"date":"2019-10-15T14:44:19","date_gmt":"2019-10-15T18:44:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/?page_id=890"},"modified":"2023-05-02T15:50:16","modified_gmt":"2023-05-02T19:50:16","slug":"personal","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/personal\/","title":{"rendered":"Personal"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I was born in central Virginia, grew up near Washington DC, and went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While in college, I sang with several of the collegiate a cappella ensembles that were so trendy at the time (the Pitch Perfect movies, horribly enough, are documentary). After college, I spent time in Minnesota and Rhode Island before settling in the Boston area. I tried out several Boston suburbs and neighborhoods (Braintree, Dorchester, and Fort Point), before settling in Somerville – just north of Cambridge and a 15 minute bike ride from MIT and Harvard. I like Somerville a lot – enough so that I’ve gotten active in city government. I serve as co-chair of the city’s Urban Forestry Committee<\/a>, work on traffic safety issues with Somerville’s Alliance for Safe Streets<\/a>, advocate for the environment as an advisor to Green and Open Somerville<\/a>, and agitate as a citizen journalist and gadfly under the Twitter handle @somershade1<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m an amateur gardener. I grow exotics like passion vines and voodoo lilies – and also tomatoes and peppers for eating and preserving. I once convinced a jasmine plant to produce fruit (yes, in Massachusetts) and then grew new jasmine plants from the seeds. I love to cook and preserve food, and I’m fascinated by fermentation. I make great pickles, good beer, and passable wine. I love to use old recipes, including some that I found in my great, great grandfather’s kitchen notebook.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I hold a black belt in Karate, and I have practiced Judo for more than a decade. The high points of my judo career were the times that olympic medalists and members of the Canadian and Russian national teams used me as a crash-test dummy \/ rag-doll during warmups. I find that those experiences prepared me well for executive leadership roles. These days, I satisfy my thrill-seeking urges as a bicycle commuter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m also an amateur cellist, working my way through recording the Bach Suites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am passionate about equity, diversity, and inclusion. I’m aware that it took a combination of privilege, luck, and hard work to get where I am today. I hope to do my part to make the world just a bit better and fairer for the next generation.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was born in central Virginia, grew up near Washington DC, and went to college at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. While in college, I sang with several of the collegiate a cappella ensembles that were so trendy at the time (the Pitch…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1083,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-890","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/890","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=890"}],"version-history":[{"count":12,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/890\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2285,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/890\/revisions\/2285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1083"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=890"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}