I was born in Chicago and grew up in Nashville, Spartanburg (SC), and Gainesville (FL). After high school, I moved to New York City to attend Columbia University and graduated from there with a BA in philosophy in 1997. I stayed in New York for another twelve years after that, first as a guitarist and songwriter in the band Elk City (the first two albums), and then doing my PhD in philosophy at the CUNY Graduate Center.
While my training is as a philosopher, some of my reserach involves designing and carrying out psychological experiments. In some of that work, I have collaborated with speech and language pathologists and psychologists to assess the cognitive impact of a loss of inner speech in people with aphasia.
In my free time I like to play soccer, make up songs, travel with family, and obsess about the Chicago Cubs.