She received her B.A. from UC San Diego and her Ph.D. from Cornell University. She specializes in Latino politics, representation, social movements, and immigration politics and policy. During the 2015-2016 academic year, she was a Ford Foundation Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania. Her work has been published in the American Journal of Political Science, Political Research Quarterly, Politics, Groups, & Identities, American Politics Research, Social Science Quarterly, and Political Science Quarterly. She is a co-founder and co-organizer of SPIRE, Symposium on the Politics of Immigration, Race, and Ethnicity, which is an annual conference of race, ethnicity, and politics scholars. She is also the Field Director for Latino Politics and Immigration at WISIR (Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality & Race​).