She received her Ph.D. in the Education of Students with Exceptionalities (Deaf Education) from Georgia State University, where she was a Language and Literacy Fellow and a member of an Institute for Education Sciences (IES) grant team focused on emergent literacy of deaf children. Previously she was a Teacher of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing and an administrator at the Georgia School for the Deaf. She currently teaches undergraduate and graduate courses related to Deaf Education. Her research focuses on how deaf children, deaf adults, and typically hearing university second-language learners develop and use American Sign Language (ASL).