Education has been the passion of my life for the last two decades. My academic background, as well as the positions I have held as a teacher, college professor, program developer, video producer, and instructional designer, have provided me with a unique collection of experiences, which I believe would contribute to the collaborative work being done with faculty that seek innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

I started my career in education as an elementary school teacher. In four different countries, I used four different languages (English, Portuguese, French and Spanish) to apply ideas that sounded and looked different in those unique cultures. It affirmed my understanding, however, that education was not bound to language or culture but was the product of successful and mutually enjoyable collaboration between teacher and student. This inspired me to share my experiences in a book I authored ten years ago and to start teaching courses that focused on pedagogy and curriculum design, at Northeastern University’s Graduate School of Education.

I loved the time I spent designing those courses and planning for experiential learning. My post-teaching reflections led me to the idea of extending my background into video production and multimedia development by taking courses at the Harvard Extension School. One of my projects, Go Beyond The Classroom, designed for an informal audience, has been used at higher education institutions around the world for the last four years as a visual teaching tool. Inspired by compelling research, I also developed and introduced new multimodal approaches to teaching and learning in and out of my classrooms at Northeastern.  

Almost two years ago, I joined the team at Northeastern University Online Experiential Learning (NUOEL) as an instructional designer. Since then, I have collaborated with faculty and multimedia specialists to build courses that either live in the online, or face-to-face environments. In addition, I lead and coordinate our Professional Development Series, as well as oversee a task force group that has a strong focus on assessment. I excel at developing relationships with programs across campus and strongly believe that team collaboration brings new and creative perspectives to every project.