She graduated from The Graduate Center-CUNY with a Doctorate in Anthropology in 2014. Her dissertation is a study of urban conservation that analyzes the challenges of conserving resources as well as open spaces in New York City. With a focus on Freshkills Park as a main case study, her research necessarily considers both the local efforts to reduce waste as well as the labor-intensive ecological maintenance work required for enhancing and preserving healthy ecosystems in the City’s parks.