Her background is in clinical psychology and she came to be interested in psychiatric genetics while she was working as a post-doctoral fellow at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) under the mentorship of Dr. Daniel Pine. Her goal was to combine her clinical background with neuroimaging and genetics. Upon arrival at the VCU Virginia Treatment Center for Children in 2005, she wrote and was awarded a K01 Mentored Research Scientist grant, under the mentorship of Dr. Kenneth Kendler, M.D. to gain a deeper understanding of behavioral and molecular genetic methods. During her K01 training, she joined the Virginia Institute for Psychiatric and Behavioral Genetics faculty.