She is a historian and author of Dollars for Dixie: Business and the Transformation of Conservatism in the Twentieth Century, published by Cambridge University Press in 2017. A graduate of Vanderbilt University (B.A., 2001) and Boston University (M.A., 2005; Ph.D., 2010), she studies political and cultural history with a focus on the intersection of culture and politics. She received the Fitchburg State University Faculty Research Award in 2018.