She was formerly a visiting assistant professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and before that an Analyst at the National Center for Research on Evaluation, Standards, Student Testing (CRESST) at UCLA. She was the Project Director for "Reading Like a Historian" in San Francisco, the first extended history curriculum intervention in urban high schools. Her 2011 dissertation won the Larry Metcalf Award from the National Council of the Social Studies, and an article that emerged from this dissertation won the 2013 William Gilbert Award from the American Historical Association. She holds a B.A. in history from Brown University and taught high school humanities at the Institute for Collaborative Education in New York City. Her work has appeared in Cognition and Instruction (2012) and the Journal of Curriculum Studies (2011).