I was born and raised in Baltimore city and I attended Loyola Blakefield. Upon graduation in 1987, I attended the University of South Carolina and graduated from the Coastal Carolina Campus.
I have held numerous jobs in several different fields before becoming a supervisor at the the Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners. I worked as a correctional officer for the Baltimore City Detention Center and afterwards I decided to work in the human services field which landed me at the Charles Hickey School. Following that, I worked for the Board of Childcare as a childcare worker. I eventually left the human service field and worked at Proctor and Gamble in quality assurance (components lab) until 2004.
In 2004, I returned to school to obtain my Masters and earned my MSW in 2006 from the University of Maryland School of Social Work. After graduation I went to work at Baltimore City Department of Social Services, and then I went to work at Kennedy Krieger Institute (KKI) in the TFC program.
After five years with KKI, I spent the next eleven years working at the Maryland Board of Social Work Examiners, with six years as the license unit supervisor. In this role, I worked on the statute and regulations committee. This gave me hands on knowledge of how the regulations are made and interpreted. I supervised the process for all license applications for the State of Maryland and I eventually developed the current application format while working there.